STUDENT SAMPLE ESSAY

Paulette Estep

Professor Hibbison

English 112

3-05-05

“Since it was Jocasta, according to the herdsman in the next scene, who actually gave the baby to him and commanded him to abandon it on the mountainside, does Jocasta kill herself because she can't face Oedipus or because she can't face the public shame of their incest?”

Poor Jocasta’s shame begins the day she must marry Laius, the abductor and molester of Crysippus according to John Porter in Sophocles' Oedipus. Catherine Avery, editor of the New Century Handbook of Greek Mythology and Legend, maintains that “Laius fell in love with Crysippus, the son of King Pelops, and carried him off to Thebes” where Crysippus mysteriously met his death. Avery goes on to say that Pelops forgave Laius and restored him to the throne of Thebes. Laius then marries Jocasta, the daughter of Menoecceus (New 318)

A sorrowful wedding night it must have been for Jocasta, a young Greek adolescent, perhaps no older than fourteen, aware of her husband’s moral crimes towards Crysippus. Married to a man who was probably twice her age, a grim stage was set. (Cartledge 114).

Jocasta gave birth to a boy; an important addition to the Greek family (Cartledge 144). An oracle foretold that this boy would kill his father and marry his mother. Laius made a decision to dispose of the child, which was not unusual in Greek culture. Newborn babies were presented to their father when they were nine days old so that he could accept the infant into Greek family life or reject it. Unwanted children were left to die of exposure or were abandoned in a specific location somewhere in the city where they might be adopted and reared as a slave (Peach 52).

Sophocles twists and turns legend and custom as he forces Jocasta into a decisive roll. Jocasta presented Oedipus to a shepherd to be abandoned on Mount Cithaeron, his feet speared with a skewer and bound (New 387). Infanticide was an accepted practice, but she would one day face the child that she so cruelly gave over to torture and death, attempting to save the worthless life of Laius. She sacrificed her child to save the very man that had brought the curse of the Sphinx down upon Thebes because of his “crimes” (New 495).

Later, Laius is murdered on a journey to seek deliverance from the curse of the Sphinx. Jocasta, barely a widow, imprudently marries a man half her age, whose name means “swollen feet”. Jocasta, no longer an adolescent, but a mature woman, was well able to understand the consequences of her actions, yet she ignored prophesy of the gods; she superceded what was foretold would come true; incest, an act so heinous even Greek society recoiled from it in Sophocles tale. The gods gave no anecdote for her dilemma, no panacea was offered to Jocasta that the murderous, incestuous prophesy could be stopped. Jocasta played a dangerous game, feigning outward devotion to the gods, praying for wisdom and help. Inwardly she denied their sovereignty and believed that she could somehow change the future.

Sophocles could have been using Jocasta to illustrate certain social evils and their consequences. Jocasta morns her lost infant. She realizes the horror of her imprudent, hasty decision when Oedipus was only three days old (Sophocles 435). Oedipus is outraged to learn of her behavior towards him, yet infanticide was a commonly accepted practice in ancient Greece (Sophocles 444). Jocasta could have taken her baby and fled from Thebes to save his life. She possessed a dubious belief in her religion which tossed her around like an ocean wave. Either she believed that the baby would really do as the gods predicted or perhaps she remembered Laius past crimes and didn’t want his child, using religious and social practices to get rid of Oedipus.

Jocasta’s behavior exhibits a strange sort of double mindedness. She wove a tangled web which ensnared her hopelessly. She became the victim of her own self serving and manipulative nature. The pagan gods of ancient Greece were eccentric, Greek mythology reveals this to us. Their idiosyncrasies appeared to control, unwillingly the lives of their subjects, yet through obedience, faithfulness and verity, Jocasta could have finished her life’s journey with honor.

We can see the moment of truth coming for Jocasta as she asks about the conflict between Creon and Oedipus (Sophocles 429). The light of truth is flickering for her and comes to its full, revealing brightness as she begs Oedipus to cease his desperate inquiries. Feigning religious devotion, Jocasta strives to prove that Oedipus’ fears are unfounded but as he persists, she knows what the awful truth is; she is the one who quickly sent Laius’ servant far away years ago when he returned to Thebes and saw Oedipus on the old kings throne (Sophocles 433). What she thought she could control through murder and deception, she now knows has come to pass (Sophocles 441). She marries Oedipus to conceal what she did to him as an infant.

Jocasta’s life became a reflection of Laius’ life. She married a man half her age and her crimes against her household, and forgotten babe, thrust a curse upon Thebes. “The foolish woman tears her house down with her own hands” (Prov. 14:1 NASV), Jocasta proved this, having outwardly pretended to revere the gods. Inwardly she tried to thwart them and unwittingly destroyed all that was precious to her.

No longer able to face Oedipus, the children, her people and her lead role in the terrible prophesy, Jocasta committed suicide, calling out to Laius in agony and dismay as if to say “what have we done?” If only she could go back to yesterday. If only she had listened and done things differently. We can only imagine her horror as her own life’s actions revealed that she precipitated unspeakable scandal and the fulfillment of prophesies.

Works Cited

Cartledge, Paul. The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization. New York: Atlantic Productions, 2000.

Peach, Susan, Anne Millard. The Greeks. Ed. Janer Chisholm. Tulsa: EDC Publishing, 1990.

The New Century Handbook of Greek Mythology and Legend. Ed. Catherine B. Avery. New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1972.

Sophocles. “Oedipus Rex”. In Judith A. Stanford’s, Responding to Literature: Stories, Poems, Plays and Essays. 4th Edition, Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003

The Ryrie Study Bible. New American Standard Version. Charles Caldwell Ryrie, Th.d., Ph.d. Chicago: The Moody Press, 1978. Proverb 14:1.

Porter, John. “Sophocles’ Oedipus”. University of Saskatchewan. 2004. 4 March 2005. <http://duke.usask.ca/~porterj/CourseNotes/Oed.html>

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Antigone's Flaw

Patricia M. Lines*

[From HUMANITAS, Volume XII, No. 1, 1999 © National Humanities Institute, Washington, DC USA]

Some theorists define politics as who gets what, when and how. Alasdair MacIntyre defines it as "civil war carried on by other means." I prefer a more hopeful definition, and lean toward Michael Oakeshott’s definition as "attending to arrangements." Or, Claes Ryn’s definition—"the peaceful settlement of disputes"—especially since Ryn correlates politics at its best with community. Such an emphasis would require the student of politics to examine not just who gets what, but how individuals arrange things, and how each takes into consideration the others who are trying to do the same.

At the very least, the peaceful conduct of affairs would require some sort of agreement on the rules. To get that agreement without actual violence, participants might still use threats based on superior power (natural or supernatural), although eventually a challenge may require executing the threat. Peaceful arrangements could also depend on deceit, bribes, persuasion and an endless variety of human tricks. The goal is to obtain sufficient agreement among enough of the individuals subject to the arrangements to give the rules stability. This is true even for political regimes based on some principle other than consent of the governed. Failure leads to chaos, rebellion, war or permanent and physical separation of contending factions.

How to attend to these arrangements and rearrangements? One choice is simply to vote, but the time-honored distrust of the tyranny of the majority would require something more. Ideally, the political community follows the advice of the wisest. But who is wisest? Who decides who is wisest? Which decisions the wisest are to decide, which are for individuals, which should be left to habit or custom? The difficulty in answering such questions has led many thinkers to identify deliberation as essential to the political process. Political deliberation requires listening and persuading, engaging and being engaged. Success depends, above all, on compromise. That is, it requires yielding here and there to the opposition, and winning some concession here and there in return.

The greatest obstacle to this kind of deliberation is hubris. It should be no surprise that the first to become aware of politics and identify it as a discipline—the Greeks—were also the first to worry about hubris. As Hannah Arendt reminds us, hubris has a corresponding virtue:

the old virtue of moderation, of keeping within bounds, is indeed one of the political virtues par excellence, just as the political temptation par excellence is indeed hubris (as the Greeks, fully experienced in the potentialities of action, knew so well) and not the will to power, as we are inclined to believe.

Implicit in Arendt’s analysis, and in that of the Greeks, is the notion that politics is the peaceful tending to arrangements. For those who prefer to take a cynical view, the will to power is both the chief political virtue and the chief political vice. Those who take such a view need not worry about the qualities that allow one to engage in deliberation with others. For those who take the view adopted here, there is still much to be learned from the Greeks.

Just as no one among the Greeks stated the case for moderation better than Aristotle, no one stated the case against hubris better than Sophocles. One might object that Sophocles did not have politics in mind, and that he presented only legendary familiar relationships. This would be selling Sophocles short, and it fails to understand how pervasive politics can be. Within the family and the clan much human action may appear to lie outside politics. This is because such communities enjoy close and implicit agreement on basic premises and how they apply to most of the community’s routine. The basic arrangements are often invisible to the outsider. For the most part, tradition and habit prescribe the action the community should take. But even families and clans engage in politics. New circumstances can challenge even the most insular and tradition-bound peoples. External threats may require new or modified arrangements; new decisions must be taken. Factions spring up, discussion takes place, and politics emerges, albeit on a small scale. Even so-called primitive tribes have tribal councils and engage in extended and serious political discourse when faced with a new problem. In larger democratic communities—those harboring individuals who differ in their fundamental approaches to living together—political discourse becomes yet more necessary, as well as more complex and more difficult.

Sophocles, as I have said, was concerned with the political vice of hubris. Oedipus Rex provides the most familiar example. Upon hearing the Delphic prophecy of patricide and incest, the well-intentioned Oedipus took radical steps to thwart fate—fleeing his parents and his home in Corinth. He did well on his own in the world. Strong and cunning, he proved himself many times, most of all when he solved the riddle of the Sphinx and saved Thebes. After Oedipus became King of Thebes, Delphi spoke again, suggesting that the only way to end a severe blight plaguing Thebes was to avenge the murder of the former king, Laius. With god-like certainty Oedipus set out to find the murderer and mete out justice.

The question of who murdered Laius fades to insignificance as Oedipus’s search for truth unearths a history he never suspected, and would never want to know. The audience and all the other characters in the play, even the blind Teiresias, see the appalling truth long before the proud and cunning Oedipus. Creon exclaims, "I can see you are blind to truth." His mother-wife Jocasta cries, "My poor child! Those are the only words I shall ever have for you." No one has mastered dramatic irony better than Sophocles.

Two frightened servants at last yield the pieces of the puzzle to Oedipus. The former Theban king, Laius, and his queen, Jocasta, also hoping to avoid the Delphic prophecy, had abandoned their infant to die. A shepherd had rescued the child and sent him to Corinth. Oedipus killed a stranger on the highway; most likely, this was Laius. Unaware of his kinship, Oedipus claimed the widowed queen, Jocasta, as his wife. Oedipus the King believed that he could simply discover who killed Laius and mete out appropriate justice. Hubris blinds him. When at last he sees the truth, he wishes only to be blind again.

What is Sophocles up to here? An astute and early critic provides clues. According to Aristotle, tragedy requires, among other things, a character whom we admire greatly, but who possesses a flaw—hamartia, or some error in judgment. He falls from happiness into misery as the play progresses through what is sometimes translated as "serious action," action which is complete, noble, and poetical. The total effect invokes dismay and horror. In the end comes the anagnorisis: the recognition or uncovering of the error. In the naive form, a hero or heroine recognizes a person or thing previously mistaken in identity, through some scar or mark or other sign. Iphegenia, for example, recognizes her brother as she is about to sacrifice him to the gods.

In the more profound form of tragedy, the hero recognizes the flaw in himself and faces it. Oedipus Rex inspired Aristotle’s theory of tragedy and exemplifies it perfectly. On seeing the truth, Oedipus gouges out his eyes. The audience participates in the catharsis that follows. The human spirit prevails over the horror, accepts the truth and clings to a more humble bargain with fate. Oedipus gives up his determination to set the world straight and accepts fate, retaining his noble qualities despite the blows of bad fortune. The final irony may be the triumph of Oedipus over fate itself, although not in a way he ever imagined. We see him again, through Sophocles’s eyes, in Oedipus at Colonus where he lives his last years in the company of a loving daughter and dies a good death.

Antigone does not seem to fit the Aristotelian formula. Aristotle himself did not seem to know what to make of it. In the Poetica’s sole reference to the play Aristotle offers Antigone as an example of a poor plot for a tragedy. The least tragic plot, he avers, involves a character who resolves to do a fearful deed and does not do it. His example is Haemon who seems ready to slay his father, Creon, and does not. This may be one of those rare cases where Aristotle misses the point. First, after more than two millennia of experience with drama, one can imagine a situation where delay in doing the dread deed makes the tragedy. Nor is it clear that Haemon had resolved to kill his father; his veiled threat may have been to kill himself, an action which he finally takes. Most important, the conflict between Haemon and his father does not stir our emotions as much as the conflict swirling around Antigone.

The play strikes us as a fine one—Hegel thought it was the supreme example of tragedy, prompting him to pose a different theory for the form. Hegel sees a dialectical clash between two ideals of justice. A noble and wise Antigone fights for the justice of traditional belief, while a tyrannical Creon fights for a right based on might. Irving Babbitt has suggested a more subtle variation of dialectic theory, hailing Antigone as the "perfect example of the ethical imagination" in contrast to her sister, Ismene, who knows merely "the law of the community." Both Antigone and Ismene are ethical, but Ismene lacks ethical imagination. As Babbitt sees it:

This law, the convention of a particular place and time, is always but a very imperfect image, a mere shadow indeed of the unwritten law which being above the ordinary rational level is . . . infinite and incapable of final formulation.

While such interpretations no doubt are true—with each uncovering layers of meaning—alone they reduce Antigone to a morality play. Such interpretations fail to explain the play’s more complex and turbulent moods.

So what drives the dramatic tension in Antigone? Consider the story anew: The two sons of Oedipus had shared the throne, alternating years as ruler. When Eteocles refused to turn over power at the end of his year, Polyneices attacked the city. The brothers died in single combat. Creon, their uncle, now king of Thebes, buried Eteocles with full honors as defender of the city. He left the body of Polyneices to rot, unmourned, outside the gates and decreed death to anyone who would honor the traitor with a burial. In the first lines of the play, Antigone has resolved to defy Creon’s decree. She has invited her sister to join her. Ismene has declined, recalling the family history of tragic defiance of both fate and lawful order. The stage is set.

Alone, Antigone slips out and scatters funeral oil and earth over her brother’s body. Creon discovers the violation of his decree, and carries out its terms with one concession to Antigone’s position as member of the royal family. He does not execute her forthwith, but walls her up in a cave, to let the gods dispose of her as they will.

In minor eddies within the play, the Aristotelian formula applies—especially to Creon, usually judged to be excessively harsh. Possibly, it also applies to Ismene, who may seem excessively timid. Both are noble and both are flawed. Both reach a moment of truth and change course. Ismene wishes to stand by her sister’s side in death. Creon softens his hard rule. But the play is not their story; Sophocles named the work Antigone. Antigone stands noblest and most heroic among all the characters, defiant of man’s rule and insisting on God’s justice. It is to her that we should look for the chief elements of the tragedy. And, if the Aristotelian formula applies, we must search for Antigone’s flaw.

The suggestion that Sophocles intended to present a flawed Antigone rubs against the grain. She is the paragon. The religion of the Greeks, like virtually all religions, required burial of the dead—even the enemy dead. The ancient tales in the Iliad, the bible to the Greeks, warn of the anger of the gods upon a failure to honor the dead. Besides, the restless shades of the unburied could cause trouble. Antigone stands for all that is right and for opposition to tyranny. Thus, we have only a play about Creon’s excessive harshness and his tragically delayed conversion. Yet, Sophocles provides a fair amount of evidence that he intended to create something more complex than a morality play.

Consider first the parallels between Antigone and Oedipus Rex. Both stories begin with a problem facing family and polis, and with the central character resolving to make things right. Antigone proceeds with unswerving resolution in her judgement of the situation. She possesses complete confidence in her ability to choose and execute a just action. She does not see the full situation; she is blind to key elements of the problem. She is like her father in most respects. Both Antigone and Oedipus claim to know justice with the certainty of a god. Oedipus believes most in his cunning and strength, Antigone in her goodness.

The flaw of hubris is easy to spot in Oedipus, but Antigone’s brilliance is so dazzling that we overlook her flaw. After all, she has formulated a great and noble truth and maintains it with courage. She asserts God’s law over man’s law. Especially in our own time, where we formally recognize the superiority, within specified spheres, of individual right over the demands of overly broad laws, Antigone seems a genius beyond her time.

Creon, by contrast, understands the needs of the polis. Following a civil war, he has placed a premium on order. He will do whatever is necessary, including the stern enforcement of harsh rules. He faces another dilemma in his role as leader: he forbade the burial of Polyneices and decreed this harsh punishment before he was aware of Antigone’s guilt. To pardon his future daughter-in-law as his first serious act as ruler of Thebes would compromise all future claims to fairness in his rule. Yet Creon listens to the chorus of old men; he listens to the blind seer. After struggling with the issue, he reconsiders his judgment; he determines to bury the body of Polyneices and to unbury Antigone with his own hands.

Antigone, on the other hand, recognizes the demands of true justice and champions it. She spurns Ismene, who initially hesitated to assist her but soon after wished to share in her sister’s punishment and death. Antigone refuses the offer. When Ismene asks whether her sister has cast her aside, Antigone’s answer ignores Ismene’s change of heart: "Yes. For you chose to live when I chose death." Antigone seems to speak not to spare Ismene, but to wound her to the quick. Antigone leaves Haemon, her betrothed, in the cold, as she left Ismene. She never seeks him out, nor even mentions his name.1 Yet Haemon is ready to defy his father for Antigone’s sake, and he refuses to live without her. Ironically, this may be what he must do to win her affection, for Antigone reveals no tenderness for anyone except those already dead.

Despite the solicitous love of Ismene and the fierce love of Haemon, Antigone complains of being alone and friendless:

I call upon Thebes’ grove in the armored plain, to be my witnesses, how with no friend’s mourning, by what decree I go to the fresh-made prison-tomb.

She compares her fate to Niobe’s—alluding to the stone image weeping on a cliff near Thebes. Significantly, Antigone overlooks the fact that hubris destroyed Niobe. Niobe had boasted that her six (in some versions seven) sons and six (or seven) daughters made her the equal of the goddess Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis. Apollo and Artemis took offense on hearing of this interesting assertion of quantity over quality. They resolved the issue by killing the hapless children and turning Niobe to stone.

The chorus, often the truth-sayer for Sophocles, provides more clues. Of Antigone, they tell us:

The girl is bitter. She’s her father’s child.
She cannot yield to trouble; nor could he.

In perhaps the most revealing exchange, the chorus turns to Antigone and tells her, plainly:

You showed respect for the dead.
So we for you: but power
is not to be thwarted so.
Your self-sufficiency has brought you down.

The last line is key: "se d autognwtoV wles orga." The above quotation is from Wyckoff’s translation. But all translations seem to head in the same direction: "A self-determined impulse hath undone thee" (Campbell). "You were self-willed. That has been your undoing" (Townsend). "And thee, thy stubborn mood, self-chosen, layeth low" (students of the University of Notre Dame, 1983). In any translation, it seems the chorus has identified Antigone’s flaw. She follows a truth that springs only from her self: It is autognwtoV, or autognotos. She will not consult with others. We could call it self-certainty or, perhaps even better, self-righteousness. It is a form of hubris.

At another point, the chorus tells Antigone she is autonomos. Literally, this means "a law unto yourself." The English word autonomy does not convey quite the right meaning, as individual autonomy was a condition the Greeks viewed with discomfort and suspicion. The autonomous being is either beast or god, living only within the horizons of its own laws. Most English translators of Antigone do not choose to place unfavorable connotations on the word. They tend to choose softer terms to describe the self-certain heroine. The best rendering is probably from Wyckoff, who translates it as "of your own motion you go." Antigone is the lone individual, refusing to sway or be swayed by any in the community. She is autognotos and autonomos. For Antigone, both knowledge and judgment are an individual affair.

Rather than see any flaw or limitation in her own understanding, Antigone only becomes more extreme in her certainty. Those who would make her a saint should reconsider her lack of perspective:

And yet the wise will know my choice was right.
Had I had children or their father dead,
I’d let them moulder. I should not have chosen
in such a case to cross the state’s decree.
What is the law that lies behind these words?
One husband gone, I might have found another,
or a child from a new man in the first child’s place,
but with my parents hid away in death,
no brother, ever, could spring up for me.

Antigone has a single mission which excludes all else. She is also fully self-centered:

Look, leaders of Thebes,
I am the last of your royal line.

These final words deny the existence of the still-living Ismene.

The movement of the drama follows that of Oedipus Rex with respect to most elements of the Aristotelian formulae. It deviates only in the continued blindness of Antigone. The stage shifts to Creon, who also suffers from hubris, or self-certainty, but who sees his error. It is difficult to identify any such clear moment of truth for Antigone. Or perhaps hamartia is not a key element of the Greek tragedy. Aristotle spoke of it only rarely (book 13: 1453a, 10, 16); nor did he emphasize the discovery of the error. On the other hand, the lyrical playwright Maxwell Anderson believes the notion is essentially correct; he believes one can find a recognition scene, if ever so subtle, "in the plays we choose to remember." Perhaps the Aristotelian formula can encompass a shift from one character to another. Or perhaps Antigone’s moment comes in these words as she nears her end:

No marriage-bed, no marriage song for me,
and since no wedding, so no child to rear.

She begins to understand that she has fallen victim to her own hubris. She hints at the possibility that she may be wrong in some way.

One must acknowledge, however, that she dismisses the idea at once. She ends on a harsh and vengeful note:

But if it is the others who are wrong
I wish them no greater punishment than mine.

Our last view of her on stage comes as her guards lead her away. The chorus reminds her of three examples in which those imprisoned within the earth forbeared and ultimately survived their rocky prisons. She will pay no attention to their advice. Neither forbearance nor the ability to take advice is among her virtues.

Sophocles has told the story of both father and daughter, and more than once the chorus compares the two, in particular, their temper, their stubbornness, and their individuality. Both are strong; both self-certain. Both stories construct similar tensions—between rival claims of justice; between individual and familial claims and the needs of the polis; between human striving and human weakness; between human individual conscience and human communal judgment; between seeing and blindness.

Sophocles created works that balance tensions in many dimensions. Each drama is different, of course. The tragedy of Oedipus seems unavoidable. Political deliberation would not have helped him much; the drama serves only to reveal the extent to which hubris can blind one to the truth. Antigone, on the other hand, might have avoided her tragic fate had she paid attention to and entered into discussion with others. To remain tragic, her story depended on a weak and inadequate recognition of her own failing.

While they plainly ask "what is justice?," the tragedies of Sophocles also ask the yet more difficult question, "how do we know it?" If Sophocles is right, there is something to learn from Antigone’s fate. When it comes to seeing the issues surrounding our understanding of justice, Creon may have something to offer after all. He believes justice requires him to give priority to the order of the polis, overruling individual judgments based on conscience. He believes in equal application of the laws, with no exceptions for the royal family. He is at least partly wrong, by the judgment of most. Yet, he is ready to discuss the issue, to listen, to question, to entertain self-doubt. Although he believes that in a time of emergency the order of the polis may require harsh punishment for those who create disturbance, he is willing to reconsider. He listens to the chorus, to Teiresias, to others; and, although he seems adamant at times, he changes his mind. With his own hands he will unearth Antigone and bury the body of Polyneices.

Antigone, on the other hand, has found a higher justice. Most commentators agree that she is right. But she will not discuss her judgment; she remains unyielding. She never doubts the wisdom of her course. She isolates herself. She acts under the illusion that only she is able to grasp the meaning of higher justice. She can only conclude that she does not belong in this world, which so misunderstands the nature of right action.

Antigone’s self-certainty and self-isolation cut short all possibilities for full deliberation. Yet full deliberation was needed to persuade Creon to change his mind. Had Antigone not isolated herself from her sister, Ismene would have stood by her side. Had she sought out Haemon, she would have had another ally. It seems likely that Eurydice, Haemon’s mother and Creon’s wife, would have joined the children’s revolt. She did register her objection to events in the end, through suicide. Had Antigone been ready to engage in politics, Creon would find himself facing the open opposition of all whom he loved. He has the capacity, as we know from his actions in the play, to yield.

Antigone’s belief that she and only she understood justice and how it must apply in the particular situation before her left her with no choice but martyrdom. If she had only some portion of self-doubt, she may have waited just a few moments before her suicide. In that event, Haemon would have rescued her. Had she waited a few moments more, Creon would have done so. A happy ending required her to consider the position of others, to adjust to their views, and to hold her individual judgment of justice with some humility. It required an Antigone who could anticipate the gradual acceptance of her position by those around her. Her self-certainty brought her down.

If all human beings suffer from short-sightedness, there is no certain source for a human grasp of truth. The best humans can do is to share insights in the hope of gaining a larger view of truth. The search for truth requires each

to talk and consult with others, even such as come short . . . in capacity, quickness and penetration; for . . . no one sees all and we generally have different prospects of the same thing according to our different . . . positions to it.2

It is no accident that the author of these words, John Locke, was a leading advocate of government by consent. His remarks formalize the idea that mutual consultation is needed before formulating a vision of justice and choosing the right action for each particular case.

Antigone’s flaw—the flaw of self-certainty—is the chief obstacle to this kind of deliberation. I probably do not need to draw attention to the fact that politics in our time suffers from the same flaw. True believers, religious or secular, seek to replace deliberative politics with eternal principles. Such persons admit of just one right answer. Premises are beyond questioning. Defining political questions as exclusively governed by immutable principles of right eliminates all need for further, often troublesome debate. Only the process of arriving at conclusions—whether the right principle was applied—can be questioned.

It is easy to spot Antigone’s flaw in the character of an antagonist one believes to be dead wrong. The rational mind easily identifies religious fundamentalists as blinded by self-righteousness. This same rational thinker may fail to perceive his own blind spots. Antigone’s flaw has a subtle quality. She has indeed discovered a great truth. We must agree with her. We must admire her. We identify with her.

Her story reminds us, however, of how difficult it is to recognize hubris in our heroes or in ourselves. Upon the discovery of a certain truth, there is a great temptation to believe one has access to all truth. To say it in traditional religious terms, it is a weakness of human beings to believe that, once they have access to one of God’s truths, they know the full mind of God. From here it becomes ever so easy to mistake one’s own will for the will of God.

Most true believers tend to enlarge their premises, leaving little to deduction. If one has determined that a particular action, and only that action, is the right thing to do, there is no choice but to take it, or to enter the realm of the immoral. Action based on such unquestioned belief lies beyond the realm of politics. I once suggested to a participant in what might be described as secular and left-leaning politics that a few leaders from that person’s organization hold a quiet, unpublicized retreat with selected leaders who are religious and right-leaning on an issue of common concern: the public school curriculum. The response was, "Whatever for?!" If I understand Sophocles correctly, such abrupt closing of the opportunity for conversation could lead to a contemporary tragedy.

If an individual as brilliant and noble as Antigone can succumb to hubris, anyone can. Antigone pursued goodness with a singular insight and courage. Discovering a flaw in a near-perfect character suggests a universal human weakness. Antigone’s flaw is a special kind of hubris that afflicts those who possess the greatest insights. Political modesty requires a recognition that one individual or group alone is likely to come up short in the search for truth: "something is left out which should go into the reckoning . . . ." No one knows the whole truth, although each may know a part of it. All human beings are "shortsighted and very often see but one side of a matter . . . . From this defect . . . no man is free. We see but in part and we know but in part, and therefore it is no wonder we conclude not right from our partial views."3 Antigone’s flaw may be the plague of our times.

*Patricia M. Lines, former Director of the Law and Education Center at the Education Commission of the States, is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and a Research Associate at the U.S. Department of Education's National Institute of Student Achievement. [Back]

1 There is one line that some translators, such as Townsend, attribute to Antigone that mentions Haemon, perhaps to soften her one-sidedness. Antigone, line 572: "Poor Haemon! See how much your father cares." Wyckoff notes, however, that all extant Greek sources give the line to Ismene. Creon responds to the comment with a reference to "your marriage" which provides some argument for attributing the line to Antigone, but, as Wyckoff points out, Creon’s remark could mean "the marriage of which you speak." Wyckoff ed., 227. [Back]

2 John Locke, Of the Conduct of the Understanding § 3 (iii) .[Back]

3 Of the Conduct of the Understanding § 3 (iii). [Back]

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Enjoying "Oedipus the King", by Sophocles
Ed Friedlander MD
erf@kcumb.edu

This website collects no information. If you e-mail me, neither your e-mail address nor any other information will ever be passed on to any third party, unless required by law. I have no sponsors and do not host paid advertisements. All external links are provided freely to sites that I believe my visitors will find helpful. This page was last modified April 1, 2010.

If you are a student assigned to read "Oedipus the King", and perhaps also to comment on Aristotle's ideas about tragedy and "tragic flaws", this site will help you get started.

Warning: This is NOT a "family" site, and Sophocles is NOT "family entertainment".

"Oedipus the King" is a monument to Sophocles's dramatic genius, and to the freedom of Athenian thought. It develops a shocking, profoundly immoral idea about a human being's ultimate relationship to the universe.

Thankfully, there is no reason to think that Sophocles's idea is true, or that Sophocles really believed it.

Commentators on Sophocles, beginning with Aristotle, have tried to cover over the obvious. This explains the nonsense about "tragic flaws" and "hybris".

If you want something nice, please leave now.

What's here?

1. The Folk Tale
2. Predestination
3. Sophocles
4. Aristotle
5. Today

1. The Folk Tale

We don't know whether there was a historical Oedipus. "Oedipus" means "swollen feet". The Greeks pronounced it "oy-DEEP-us". Oed- is the same root as "oedema / edema" (tissue swelling; the British preserve the initial "o"), while "-pus" is feet (hence "octopus", the eight-footed animal.)

Laius and Jocasta were king and queen of Thebes, a town in Greece. One day, they had a baby boy. An oracle prophesied that the boy would grow up and kill his father and marry his mother. To thwart the prophecy, Laius and Jocasta decided to kill their baby. In those days, it was usual to leave an unwanted or defective baby in the wilderness. Laius and Jocasta did this. To be extra-sure, they pierced his little feet and tied them together. (Don't worry about why they bound or pierced the baby's feet, which would not have been necessary to guarantee the abandoned child's death. It may have been introduced to explain the hero's name. It also helps later to confirm Oedipus's true identity.)

A kindly shepherd found the baby. He gave the baby to a friend, who took it to Corinth, another town. (Corinth reappears in the New Testament.) The king and queen of Corinth couldn't have a baby of their own. So they adopted the foundling.

Nobody ever told little Oedipus that his mother was never pregnant. One day, after he had grown up, a drunk mentioned his being adopted. Oedipus questioned his parents, but they denied it. Oedipus visited various oracles to find out whether he was really adopted. All the oracles told him instead that he would kill his father and marry his mother. (None of this makes much sense. Again, don't worry about it. This is a folk tale.)

To thwart the oracles, Oedipus left Corinth permanently. (Again, don't worry. Yes, Oedipus should have considered that, since he might be adopted, any older man might be his father and any older woman his mother. But this is a folk tale.)

Travelling the roads, Oedipus got into a traffic squabble and killed a stranger who (unknown to him) was King Laius. In one version, there was a dispute over right-of-way on a bridge. In those days, high rank got to go first, Oedipus identified himself as heir to the throne of Corinth, and for some reason (again, don't worry about it) Laius's people simply attacked instead of explaining that he was king of Thebes. Some versions say that the rude Laius drove over Oedipus's sore foot, making him lose his temper.

Soon Oedipus's smarts saved the town of Thebes, and he was made king. (In a folk-tale within a folk-tale, Oedipus solved the Riddle of the Sphinx. "What animal has four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?" Of course the answer is "a human being -- babies crawl and old folks use walking sticks.") Oedipus married Laius's widow, Queen Jocasta. He ruled well, and they had four children.

Eventually, Oedipus and Jocasta found out what had really happened. (You must assume that accidentally killing your father and marrying your mother is a disaster.) Jocasta committed suicide, and Oedipus blinded himself and became a wandering beggar.

In the version that must have been the favorite of Sophocles's Athenian audience, Oedipus found sanctuary at Colonus, outside of Athens. The kindness he was shown at the end made the city itself blessed.

The moral of the folk tale? Even if you try to thwart your destiny, you won't succeed!

In Iliad XXIII, we read about one Mecisteus, who "went once to Thebes after the fall of Oedipus, to attend his funeral, and he beat all the people of Cadmus", evidently at boxing (funeral games) which is the subject of the passage. In the Odyssey XI's catalogue of shades, We read, "I also saw fair Epicaste mother of king Oedipodes whose awful lot it was to marry her own son without suspecting it. He married her after having killed his father, but the gods proclaimed the whole story to the world; whereon he remained king of Thebes, in great grief for the spite the gods had borne him; but Epicaste went to the house of the mighty jailor Hades, having hanged herself for grief, and the avenging spirits haunted him as for an outraged mother -- to his ruing bitterly thereafter." That's what Homer has to say about Oedipus. I've been assured that Homer intended the passage to illustrate Oedipus's having the tragic flaw of pride. I can't see what kind of sense this makes.

A NYU student found a personal meaning:

What is the moral of this story? Don't go to a fortune teller! Let life take its course. Your fate is already written and sealed. If you know all there is to know about your life, then why bother living? You'll spend the rest of your life worrying about what's to come. Embrace life and its surprises.

Oedipus Wrecked -- humor. Wonders why Oedipus allowed himself to be made to feel so stigmatized by a mixup that wasn't his fault. "Moral of the story: Being a victim of gurus, society, and circumstances does not relieve one of the responsibility of thinking for themselves. It does make for a tragic hero, however."

Sphinxes -- and a lot on the background of the story. The author is with me on the "hamartia" business, below. Thanks for the sphinx.

2. Predestination

Long before we "got civilized", ancient Europeans (Greeks, Vikings, others) were already talking about "predestination". If something was going to happen, it would happen and there was nothing you could do about it.

Why would anybody talk like this?

1. Ancient people may have been impressed (or wanted to be impressed) by the fulfillment of prophecies. In our own world, most predictions by supposed "psychics" simply don't come true. But people want to believe in the supernatural, and people like to tell each other about the rare occasions when something happens that a psychic said would happen. So money-making "psychics" make lots of predictions and keep them vague.

People have such a strong desire to believe in the power of supernatural prediction that they even invent stories of psychic predictions being fulfilled. The most famous example (Nostradamus and the gray monk in Varennes woods) continues to be told, even though the tale of Louis XVI being disguised as a monk when he was captured there is just a lie.

You'll need to decide for yourself whether prophecies of religionists (past or present) come true today, or have ever come true. Some Christians have taught that the Greek oracles were successful because they were diabolic, and that they went silent on the first Christmas (for example, Milton's "Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity"). People want to believe in oracles.

2. Believing in predestination frees people from worry. Talking about unalterable destiny is extremely popular among soldiers going into battle -- a powerful antidote to obessive fear that would slow or distract a warrior. Soldiers tell each other, "If the bullet has your name on it, you will die." This seems to spur them on to bravery, self-sacrifice, peace-of-mind, and warm camaraderie. Talk about "fate", "predestination", and so forth has found its way into warriors' tales across many cultures. In the Iliad, even Zeus (? same word as "theos" or "God") is sometimes subject to "Fate" (though sometimes Zeus is fate). We also see this in peacetime, whenever people face frightful conflict.

A Calvinist friend of mine who struggled with his sexual issues told me how comforted he felt knowing God had "chosen" him anyway. For some reason that I do not understand, he could believe in this. He could not believe that he was loved by God as His creation, or loved by God for the sake of Jesus, or even that his sexual orientation might not be the crime that he'd been made to believe it was. Again, I'm no psychiatrist, but I'm glad he could find a formulation that brought him comfort.

Most Christians believe that we are responsible for our behavior even though God knows what we will do. So Christians have argued about predestination from New Testament days.

Luke says that the people who chose Christ were predestined to do so. Dante asks the blessed souls in heaven about predestination, and is told they don't know the answer, either. Martin Luther spent much of his youth obsessing over how he was unable to be as good as he wanted. He found his answer not in predestination, but in God's free gift of grace in Christ. For him, this was a comfort and assurance. "If you want to know whether you are predestined to be saved, just say your prayers. Then you will know you are predestined for salvation." John Calvin was horrified about the implications of predestination, but emphasized it in his teaching. Other preachers like Jonathan "Spiders" Edwards and the Wesleys taught that Christ had died for everybody and that everybody had a free choice. Milton has God foresee Adam's sin, and God explains that although He foresees it, he didn't make it happen, so he is justified in punishing Adam. Racine's "Phaedra" marked a return to themes of Greek tragedy and people being the victims of cruel destiny. Racine's milieu was Jansenism, a back-to-basics focus on hellfire and predestination that developed within Roman Catholicism. Boswell, who wrote the biography of Samuel Johnson, obsessed about predestination and became profoundly depressed thinking he could end up damned eternally. He's not the only person who's had this experience. In the US, the "Free Will Baptist" denomination emphasized evangelization and need to work hard to bring others to Christ, against those who thought that God's predestination made this unnecessary.

Some Hindus and Buddhists have taught that a person's behavior in a past life predestines happiness or misery in the current one, by the laws of karma. Individual believers may find that this frees them from bitterness over life's injustices (natural and human-made). You'll need to decide for yourself whether this is good or bad. Belief in karma has awakened social conscience and kindness to strangers in those who believe that "what goes around comes around."

The theme of predestination continues in secular literature. Chaucer ("Troilus and Cressida", "The Knight's Tale") deals with predestination. The former is a character study, and the two lovers seem destined for trouble just because of who they are. Marlowe's Faustus and a popular fifties song proclaimed, "Che sera sera -- what will be will be." Ambiguous -- do we make our own decisions or not? Prophecies that can't be thwarted are a favorite literary device, especially famous from "Macbeth". Ideas about predestination are parodied in "Tristram Shandy" -- the baby is predestined to have a small nose and an ugly name despite the conscious efforts of the parents to avoid these supposed disasters. Today, fulfilled prophecies are a staple of fiction. Although the vast majority of psychic predictions in the real world are failures, they come true as plot devices on the Silver Screen.

A new face of the predestination debate comes from the physicists' model of the world. At least in Newtonian physics, if you know everything about a closed system at one moment of time, you can predict everything that will happen in the future. If our world is really like this, then physical laws predetermine what will happen in our brains, and what we will think and do. The laws of physics (ultimately) even determine our decisions about which side to take in a college bull session about "predestination versus free will."

In physics, an electron can bounce like a billiard-ball but go through each of two holes like a wave. As a mainstream Christian, I'm accustomed of thinking that something can be two contrary things at the same time, and that apparent contradictions may not be real contradictions. The Good Lord feeds the birds, but I know how birds really get their food. I give thanks to the Good Lord for the birth of a child, but nobody requests equal time for "stork science". I know how I get sick and how I recover, and thank the Good Lord for my recovery. The bread and wine are Christ's body and blood -- I don't know how. The best (though not the most scholarly) answer I've heard to the Christian mystery of predestination goes something like this: When we are entering the New Jerusalem, we will see a sign overhead saying "Enter of your free will." When we are inside, and look back, the reverse of the sign will say "God chose us from before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4)".

The folk tale of Oedipus has a popular theme -- predestination.

Sigmund Freud and the "Oedipus complex" aren't the subject of this site. Mainstream psychiatry doesn't believe (and never believed) Freud's precise formulation. Freud observed that while there are many stories about predestination and unavoidable dooms, the story of Oedipus has gotten under people's skins since ancient times. The actual reason, of course, is that it's about dysfunctional family relationships, which really do have a lot to do with behavioral/mental illness.

Oedipus -- the legend, from Wikipedia. Tells about modern versions, including some modern ribaldry.

3. Sophocles

Sophocles wrote "Oedipus the King" for the annual festival where playwrights competed for prizes. It was a major civic occasion, with attendance expected.

Sophocles the writer is phenomenally good, especially considering his era. His writing is tight, with each phrase contributing to the whole. He is full of succinct observations on life. And despite the limits of the form, he often manages to make his characters seem like real individuals.

The title of our play is often given in its Latin translation "Oedipus Rex", rather than in its original Greek ("Oedipus Tyranneus"), since the Greek term for king is the English "tyrant" which means a monarch who rules without the consent of the people.

As the play opens, the priest of Zeus and a bunch of non-speaking characters (old people, children) appear before King Oedipus with tree-branches wrapped with wool. It was evidently the custom to do this in front of a god's altar when you wanted something urgently.

Oedipus greets them as a caring, compassionate leader. The priest explains (really for the audience's benefit) that Thebes is suffering from a plague. Plants, animals, and people are all dying. The people know Oedipus is not a god, but they believe that some god inspired him to solve the riddle of the sphinx and save the town. And since Oedipus has been king, he has done a splendid job. So now people look to him to find a cure for the plague.

Oedipus explains (really for the audience's benefit) that he has sent Creon (Jocasta's brother) to the oracle of the god Apollo at Delphi to get an answer. He's late returning, but as soon as he gets back, Oedipus promises to do whatever the oracle says.

Just then, Creon arrives. Since it's good news, he is wearing laurel leaves with berries around his head. Creon says, "All's well that ends well." (I'm told that the Greeks loved irony.) Apollo said that the killer of Laius must be found and banished, and the plague will end. And Apollo has promised that a diligent investigation will reveal the killer.

Oedipus asks to review the facts. All that is known is that Laius left for Delphi and never returned. (Don't ask what Oedipus did with the bodies of Laius and his crew.) There was no immediate investigation, because of the sphinx problem. One of Laius's men escaped, and walked back to Thebes. (Don't ask what Oedipus did with Laius's horses and chariot.) By the time he got back, Oedipus was being hailed as king. The witness said Laius was killed by a gang of robbers. (We can already figure out why the witness lied. And we'll learn later that he asked immediately to be transferred away from Thebes, and has been gone ever since.)

Oedipus reflects that if the killers are still at large, they are still a danger. He decides to issue a policy statement to help find the killer.

The chorus, in a song, calls on the various gods (including Triple Artemis, in her aspects as huntress, moon-goddess, and goddess of dark sorcery), to save them from the plague and from the evil god Ares, who is ordinarily the god of war but is here the god of general mass death.

Oedipus issues a policy statement, that whoever comes forward with information about the murder of Laius will be rewarded, and that if the killer himself confesses, he will not be punished beyond having to leave the city permanently. On the other hand, if anyone conceals the killer, Oedipus says he will be cursed. Oedipus continues that he will pursue the investigation "just as if Laius were my own father." (Irony.)

The Chorus says that Apollo ought to come right out and say who the murderer is. (The Chorus's job is to say what ordinary people think.) Oedipus says, "Nobody can make the gods do what they don't want to." The chorus suggests bringing in the blind psychic, Teiresias. Especially, they hope he can find the missing witness to the killing. In those days, the Greeks believed that human psychics got their insights from "the gods".

There are other stories about Teiresias. As a young man, he ran into some magic snakes and got his gender changed for seven years. This enabled him to tell whether the male or the female enjoys sex more. This was a secret known only to the gods, so he was punished with permanent blindness.

Teiresias comes in. Oedipus asks his help finding the killers, ending up by saying, "The greatest thing you can do with your life is to use all your special talents to help others unselfishly."

Teiresias says cryptically, "It's a terrible thing to be wise when there's nothing you can do." (As A.A. Milne would say later, and perhaps Oedipus too, "When ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise.")

Teiresias says, "I want to go home." Oedipus calls him unpatriotic. Teiresias says, "Your words are wide of the mark (hamartia)". Our expression in English is "You're missing the point". (Originally an archery target was a point.) We'll hear about hamartia again.

Teiresias continues to stonewall, and Oedipus gets very angry. Finally Teiresias gives in, says Oedipus is the killer, and adds that he is "living in shame with his closest relative."

Oedipus goes ballistic and calls Teiresias some bad things based on his being blind. (Irony.) Teiresias says, "You'll see soon." Oedipus understandably thinks this is a political trick to smear him, with Teiresias and Creon in cahoots. Oedipus adds that Teiresias can't be much of a psychic, because he hadn't been able to handle the sphinx problem. The Chorus tells both men to cool down. Teiresias leaves, predicting disaster. Soon Oedipus will learn the truth and be a blind exile, leaning on his staff.

The Chorus sings about the oracle at Delphi, which was supposedly the center of the world. "Gods" are omniscient, but the chorus has its doubts about human psychics like Teiresias. Especially, they cannot believe Oedipus is a killer.

Creon comes in, incensed that Oedipus would accuse him of trying to smear him. The Chorus says Oedipus is simply angry. Creon says he must be nuts. The Chorus says that to the king's faults and misbehavior, they are blind. ("See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" -- the norm in a non-democracy.) Oedipus comes in and accuses Creon directly of planning a coup, using a smear by a crooked psychic as an excuse. They exchange angry words. Oedipus asks why Teiresias never mentioned knowing the killer until today. Creon can't explain this. He defends himself from the accusation of planning a coup. (1) Being king is too much trouble. (2) Creon has other worthwhile things to do. (3) Creon has everything he needs. (4) Creon has political influence anyway. (5) Creon is well-liked and isn't going to do an obvious wrong. "You build a good reputation over a lifetime. A single bad action ruins it." Irony.

Oedipus isn't satisfied. He says he wants Creon executed for treason. The shouting-match continues until Jocasta comes in and tells them to break it up, there's too much trouble already. The Chorus says it agrees, and tells Jocasta that both men are at fault.

Creon leaves, and Jocasta asks what's happened. The Chorus talks about what a fine king Oedipus has been, and says, "Let's forget the whole business with Teiresias's prophecy." The Chorus uses a variant of the proverb, "Let sleeping dogs lie." It's better not to ask about things that can make trouble. Irony.

Oedipus talks about it anyway. Jocasta says, "Well, I don't believe in psychics. I'll prove it. Laius and I were told that our baby would kill him and marry me. But this never happened, because we left the baby to die in the woods. And the witness said that Laius was killed at that place where three roads meet by robbers."

"Uh-oh", says Oedipus. "Which three roads?" Irony.

Jocasta says, "It's where the roads from Thebes, Delphi, and Daulis meet. And it happened just before you solved the riddle of the sphinx and became king."

Oedipus is upset. He asks Zeus (chief god), "What are you doing to me?" He asks Jocasta for a description. Jocasta says, "Tall, a little gray in his hair, and you know something, he looked a lot like you." Irony.

Oedipus continues his questioning. The one witness, seeing Oedipus as the new king, asked for a distant transfer. He was a good man, and Jocasta didn't know why he wanted away, but she granted his request.

Oedipus tells his story. He was going to the oracles to find out whether he was adopted. All of them told him simply that he would kill his father and marry his mother. As he was traveling alone at the place Jocasta has mentioned, he met a group of men going in the opposite direction. The men, including the leader, started insulting him. Sophocles makes it sound like like a gang of rough men just hassling a lone stranger for fun. One of the men shoved Oedipus. Oedipus punched him back. The leader struck Oedipus treacherously on the back of the head with the horse staff, Oedipus turned and hit the leader in the chest with his own staff, knocking him out of the chariot. Then Oedipus managed to kill them all except for the one who ran away.

It was justifiable, self-defense. But Oedipus is devastated. He says he must be the killer of Laius, and he is ashamed that he has been having sex with his victim's wife. Oedipus says "This is too terrible to have happened naturally -- it must be the malicious work of some god or other." He says he will simply leave the city, now, and let the plague end. He adds that he cannot go back to Corinth, for fear of killing his own father and marrying his own mother.

The Chorus is deeply sympathetic to Oedipus, and appreciative of his willingness to go voluntarily into exile to save the city. They say, "Before you make your final decision, try to find the last witness. Maybe he will exonerate you." And Oedipus notes, "The witness did say it was robbers, plural."

Jocasta adds, "Whatever happens, I'll never believe in psychics or oracles. Laius was prophesied to die by the hand of his own child."

The Chorus sings a puzzling song about how (1) we have to obey the gods; (2) the gods's best gift is good government; (3) if the government is bad, there is no reason to be good; (4) nobody believes in oracles any more.

Jocasta comes in, having visited the local shrines and left little offerings, and asks people to join her in praying for the distraught Oedipus. He's our leader, and we need him now. She prays to Apollo to make this disastrous situation better. Irony.

Just then, a messenger comes in from Corinth. He says "Lucky Jocasta, you lucky wife!" (Actually, "Blessed is your marriage bed!" Irony.) The king of Corinth has died, and the Corinthians have chosen Oedipus to be their new king. (Greek city-states were often elective monarchies.) Jocasta says, "Great news. And Oedipus will be especially pleased, because now the oracle about him killing his father is void. You see, I was right not to believe in oracles." Irony.

Oedipus comes in, hears the news, and says, "Maybe the oracle has been fulfilled figuratively; perhaps he died of grief for my absence. But I'm still worried about marrying my mother." Jocasta says, "Forget it. Life is governed by chance, not destiny. Maybe you'll dream about marrying your mother. You should ignore dreams." Oedipus is still worried. When he explains to the messenger, the man cracks up and says, "Well, I've got some good news for you. You don't have to worry about marrying the lady you've called mother... because you're adopted!"

All hell breaks loose. Oedipus questions the messenger, and learns the messenger had been herding sheep, had met a shepherd who had found Oedipus, had taken the baby, had taken the pin out of his ankles, and had given him to the king and queen of Corinth to raise as their own. Oedipus is starting to wonder about what has always been wrong with his feet.

Oedipus says, "It's time to clear this up. Send for the other shepherd." Jocasta realizes exactly what has happened. Jocasta begs Oedipus NOT to pursue the matter. Oedipus says he has to know. (If Oedipus wasn't so intent on getting to the truth, there'd be no play.) Jocasta runs out horribly upset. Oedipus is a little slower, and thinks, "Perhaps she's upset to find out I'm not really of royal blood. But what the heck -- I'm 'Destiny's child' -- and that's something to be proud of! I'm me." Irony.

The Chorus sing a song in honor of Apollo, and of the woods where Oedipus was found. The say the spot will become famous. Perhaps Oedipus is the child of nymphs and satyrs. Irony.

The other shepherd is brought in. He already has figured things out, and pretends he doesn't remember. Then he begs the other messenger to be quiet. But Oedipus insists on the truth. It comes out. Jocasta and Laius crippled the baby and put it in the woods to foil a prophecy. Oedipus had, indeed, always wondered what was wrong with his feet. Now everybody knows the truth. Oedipus rushes out.

The Chorus sings a song about how transient happiness is, what a splendid king Oedipus has been, and how Oedipus is now the victim of destiny.

The next scene is an extremely graphic account, by an eyewitness. Jocasta ran into the bedroom, screaming. She locked the door from inside. A few minutes later, Oedipus came in, and broke down the door with what seemed to be supernatural strength. He found Jocasta dead, hanging. Oedipus took the body down, then removed the pin that held up her dress. He stabbed it again and again into his eyes, saying he has looked at his mother's naked body when he shouldn't, and he has learned what he now wishes he hadn't. The blood didn't merely dribble, as after a single needlestick. It gushed on both sides. For this to happen, the choroidal artery that enters the eye from behind must be severed. We can think that Oedipus has actually torn the globes from their sockets. Oedipus now begs to be taken out of the city (so that the plague will end), but he has no strength and no guide.

Oedipus comes in. Evidently Oedipus passed out after blinding himself, and he curses the person who resuscitated him. The Chorus asks, "How were you able to rip out your eyeballs?" Oedipus replies, "Apollo gave me the strength to do it."

Creon is the new king. He is not angry, merely kind. He helps Oedipus up and out of the city, guided by his two daughters. Staff in hand, Oedipus himself is the answer to the riddle of the sphinx. Oedipus says that some incredible destiny must surely await him. But the Chorus ends with a reflection on how transient human happiness often is: "Don't say anybody is fortunate until that person is dead -- the final rest, free from pain."

What is Sophocles saying?

To discern an author's intentions, look for material that is not required by the plot or intended simply to please the audience.

In retelling the story of Oedipus, Sophocles goes beyond mere irony.

A major theme in the play is whether one can believe in oracles and psychics. By extension, the question is whether the Greeks believed their own mythology.
Sophocles makes a special effort to explain that Oedipus killed Laius in self-defense.
More generally, Sophocles goes out of his way to present Oedipus as an extremely capable, beloved administrator. Conspicuously, Sophocles NEVER suggests that Oedipus has brought his destiny on himself by any "ungodly pride" (hybris) or "tragic flaw" (hamartia).
The last lines seem ambiguous. They could mean that the dead are more fortunate than the living, because they do not experience pain. Is life really that bad?
"The gods" made the prophecies that led Oedipus into disaster. The sphinx appeared (she must have been sent by the gods), and Oedipus solved her riddle (the chorus says he must have been guided by the gods.) Teiresias could not solve the riddle, or detect the killer -- thanks to "the gods". At the beginning, Apollo's oracle simply says, "Find the killer" -- leading to the cruel ironies of the play. Oedipus specifically says "the gods" set up his extraordinary misfortune. And at the end, Apollo merely gives Oedipus the strength to carve his own eyes out of their sockets.
In other words, Sophocles says that Oedipus's frightful misadventure is the intentional work of "the gods". At the end, everybody says this. Pure and simple. Nobody even asks why.

The Golden Age of Athens was a time for thinkers, scientists, inventors, and for people to share ideas freely. Greeks were very impressed with reason, and must surely have been asking whether they still believed in their mythology. "Social conservatives" prosecuted Socrates for expressing doubts about "the gods", but only because they thought this would corrupt the minds of young people. (Does this sound familiar?)

People have often noted that comedy and melodrama have arisen independently in many cultures, but that tragedy has its unique beginnings in Athens's golden age -- the first time that we hear people asking the tough questions about what they really believed.

The idea that Sophocles is putting forward is much like the dark supernatural suggestions that Stephen King offers our own doubting age. Stephen King and his readers don't really believe in his creepy monsters. And I don't know whether Sophocles really believed the message of "Oedipus the King".

Sophocles is saying, "Maybe the gods do exist... and are consciously and elaborately MALICIOUS. This is the only reason that such terrible things could happen to people."

Oedipus the King, with lines numbered
Oedipus the Wreck -- modern site for students
Ablemedia -- study questions
Temple U Notes. Notably, nothing on "tragic flaws."

4. Aristotle

Aristotle's Poetics are lecture notes on poetry, with a focus on tragedy. Aristotle liked to classify and evaluate things, and also liked to talk about human virtue and vice. Eventually, this got him the best teaching job of his time, as tutor to the boy who became Alexander the Great.

Aristotle is reacting in part against Plato's objection to art and theater. Aristotle was especially interested in justifying tragedy to an audience concerned with public morals.

I am quoting below from the translation of the Poetics by S.H. Barber.

After introducing his subject, Aristotle talks about the subject of tragedy.

Since the objects of imitation are men in action, and these men must be either of a higher or a lower type (for moral character mainly answers to these divisions, goodness and badness being the distinguishing marks of moral differences), it follows that we must represent men either as better than in real life, or as worse, or as they are. It is the same in painting. Polygnotus depicted men as nobler than they are, Pauson as less noble, Dionysius drew them true to life. -- II

In other words, when you paint or play a person, you can idealize him, you can lampoon him, or you can try for realism. Aristotle continues...

The same distinction marks off Tragedy from Comedy; for Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life. -- II

Aristotle means both better-spoken and of better moral character. Aristotle goes on to explain why people make poetry in the first place. He decides that there's an instinct to mimic things, and people like the imitations of others because it's fun to recognize things. He continues...

Poetry now diverged in two directions, according to the individual character of the writers. The graver spirits imitated noble actions, and the actions of good men. The more trivial sort imitated the actions of meaner persons, at first composing satires, as the former did hymns to the gods and the praises of famous men. -- IV

Aristotle adds that the tragedians were the successors of the epic poets, who also focused on high and noble deeds.

Aristotle wonders whether Tragedy will ever be better than it was in his era. He tells about its origins in improvisation, and its recent history.

Aeschylus first introduced a second actor; he diminished the importance of the Chorus, and assigned the leading part to the dialogue. Sophocles raised the number of actors to three, and added scene-painting. -- IV

Originally, tragedies were songs sung by a chorus. Then one member would take the role of a character. Aeschylus added a second speaking part apart from the chorus. Sophocles added a third, and introduced stage scenery.

Now Aristotle moves into the famous definition of tragedy.

Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions. -- VI

Tragedy must be a unified story, about something important. Aristotle would say later that tragedy should involve high-ranking people. He doesn't give any reason that makes sense. Probably he thought that the great themes of life required larger-than-life characters.

Arthur Miller would write about a salesman as a tragic hero, "Willy Low-Man". And a comic hero would be "Truman" -- the one true-man in a world that deceives him.

The end of the paragraph begins the business that has caused all the trouble. "Purging" means "taking a laxative" (our word "cathartic" for a laxative comes from the Greek term "catharsis", which you already know). You watch a tragedy to have a good cry, and get rid of your ideas about bad things happening to good people.

Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality- namely, Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Song. -- VI

Aristotle goes on to explain what these are.

Plot: the story; the good ones focus on a single episode.
Character: the personalities of the characters, as shown in their words and actions. (Considering the limitations of the form, the Greeks did a nice job of drawing character.)
Diction: the right choice of words. Aristotle points out how effective using just the right word can be.
Thought: Arguments and exposition. Aristotle compares it to rhetoric.
Spectacle: as we'd say, "special effects". Not so much the poet's business as the stage-specialist's.
Song: words joined to music.

What is missing? Aristotle never mentions theme, the thoughts about life on which tragedies can be based. Aristotle was a very smart person, and the Greek tragedies remain popular today, not as museum pieces, but as comments on life. Yet Aristotle is silent on this important element of tragedy.

As you continue to study literature, you'll constantly look for themes. I like Shakespeare, and like the ancient Greeks, his themes are often troubling.

Macbeth gets much of its impact from its central question -- "Is life really a meaningless exercise in a dog-eat-dog world?"

Hamlet focuses on the phoniness and meanness of human society. Hamlet starts by wishing he was dead. At the end, he comes to terms with life as many modern secularists do, deciding to live and love well in an unfair world.

The themes of Romeo and Juliet were radical in Shakespeare's time. Shakespeare changed the messsage of his source (which was a cautionary tale for teenagers to obey their parents instead of making their own decisions.) Young people should be allowed to choose their own husbands and wives. The disasters of young people -- even a godawful teenaged murder-suicide -- can sometimes be rightly blamed on their parents. And love gives happiness and dignity even in the worst circumstances.

Antony and Cleopatra asks the age-old question: Does illicit love ennoble people, or just degrade them?

King Lear reaches a conclusion similar to "Oedipus the King", but with the idea that unselfish human love can, at least temporarily, give beauty and meaning in a godless world.

Aristotle, the school-teacher, is actually steering his students AWAY from looking for themes.

Aristotle goes on to say that the plot is best kept unified, without subplots, and the action not covering more then 24 hours. Subjects from mythology are traditional but not mandatory. (Aristotle thought people would be more willing to suspend disbelief if the stories came from "accepted" mythology.) If there are to be coincidences, they should seem to make sense.

But again, Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but of events inspiring fear or pity. Such an effect is best produced when the events come on us by surprise; and the effect is heightened when, at the same time, they follow as cause and effect. The tragic wonder will then be greater than if they happened of themselves or by accident; for even coincidences are most striking when they have an air of design. We may instance the statue of Mitys at Argos, which fell upon his murderer while he was a spectator at a festival, and killed him. Such events seem not to be due to mere chance. Plots, therefore, constructed on these principles are necessarily the best. -- IX

Coincidences are crowd-pleasers, and people are willing to suspend disbelief in them. (People want to believe in magic.) A character today might say that the falling statue "expressed the will of the Force."

Aristotle launches into a big discussion about "simple" vs. "complex" plots. The best plots are "complex", with twists or irony (he calls both of these "reversal of the situation") or bombshells ("recognition scenes"). Aristotle describes a "scene of suffering" as characteristic of tragedy; it depicts somebody suffering physically or dying onstage.

A perfect tragedy should, as we have seen, be arranged not on the simple but on the complex plan. It should, moreover, imitate actions which excite pity and fear, this being the distinctive mark of tragic imitation. It follows plainly, in the first place, that the change of fortune presented must not be the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity: for this moves neither pity nor fear; it merely shocks us. Nor, again, that of a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity: for nothing can be more alien to the spirit of Tragedy; it possesses no single tragic quality; it neither satisfies the moral sense nor calls forth pity or fear. Nor, again, should the downfall of the utter villain be exhibited. A plot of this kind would, doubtless, satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither pity nor fear; for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves. Such an event, therefore, will be neither pitiful nor terrible. There remains, then, the character between these two extremes- that of a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty. He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous -- a personage like Oedipus, Thyestes, or other illustrious men of such families. -- XIII

This passage continues to cause problems. Plays about bad people ending up happy don't satisfy Aristotle. ("Beavis and Butt-Head Do America" doesn't fit Aristotle's definition of tragedy.) Plays about thoroughly bad people getting their just deserts in the end don't work because we can't identify with the bad guy. ("Richard III" doesn't fit Aristotle's definition of a tragedy, either.) Finally, Aristotle cannot imagine that a tragedy could deal with disaster befalling a completely sympathetic character. He says this would merely shock us.

But "Oedipus the King" DOES shock us, and is intended to do so. Why is Aristotle avoiding the obvious? We'll soon see.

A well-constructed plot should, therefore, be single in its issue, rather than double as some maintain. The change of fortune should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad. It should come about as the result not of vice, but of some great error or frailty, in a character either such as we have described, or better rather than worse. The practice of the stage bears out our view. -- XIII

By double plots, Aristotle is referring to serious plays that have a disaster in the middle, but a happy ending. Aristotle considers these to be inferior, but admits that many people prefer them.

In the second rank comes the kind of tragedy which some place first. Like the Odyssey, it has a double thread of plot, and also an opposite catastrophe for the good and for the bad. It is accounted the best because of the weakness of the spectators; for the poet is guided in what he writes by the wishes of his audience. The pleasure, however, thence derived is not the true tragic pleasure. It is proper rather to Comedy, where those who, in the piece, are the deadliest enemies -- like Orestes and Aegisthus -- quit the stage as friends at the close, and no one slays or is slain. -- XIII

This only makes sense if you share Aristotle's assumption that the purpose of serious drama is to make you have a good scare and a good cry and go back to thinking that real-life is more fair.

Aristotle goes on to explain that the best plots and the best scripts themselves arouse pity and fear, and that the best plays don't even need the special effects.

Fear and pity may be aroused by spectacular means; but they may also result from the inner structure of the piece, which is the better way, and indicates a superior poet. For the plot ought to be so constructed that, even without the aid of the eye, he who hears the tale told will thrill with horror and melt to pity at what takes place. This is the impression we should receive from hearing the story of the Oedipus. -- XIV

Aristotle goes on...

Let us then determine what are the circumstances which strike us as terrible or pitiful. -- XIV

They are aroused especially when people kill friends or family. The killer may or may not know what he/she is doing. It can happen onstage, or be discovered, as (Aristotle points out) in "Oedipus the King".

Aristotle was a product of his times.

In respect of Character there are four things to be aimed at. First, and most important, it must be good. Now any speech or action that manifests moral purpose of any kind will be expressive of character: the character will be good if the purpose is good. This rule is relative to each class. Even a woman may be good, and also a slave; though the woman may be said to be an inferior being, and the slave quite worthless. The second thing to aim at is propriety. There is a type of manly valor; but valor in a woman, or unscrupulous cleverness is inappropriate. -- XV

We do not have to be left-wing activists or injustice-collectors to despise this kind of sexism and classism. But the truth is that on the Greek stage, the women are as interesting, sympathetic, intelligent and brave as the men -- an obvious fact that Aristotle ignores.

Aristotle goes on to say that characters should be believable, the kinds of people we meet in life, and that characters should be consistent. Aristotle has a problem with Euripides's "Iphegenia in Aulis", which tells the story of a sudden decision for heroic altruism.

It remains to speak of Diction and Thought, the other parts of Tragedy having been already discussed. Concerning Thought, we may assume what is said in the Rhetoric, to which inquiry the subject more strictly belongs. Under Thought is included every effect which has to be produced by speech, the subdivisions being: proof and refutation; the excitation of the feelings, such as pity, fear, anger, and the like; the suggestion of importance or its opposite. Now, it is evident that the dramatic incidents must be treated from the same points of view as the dramatic speeches, when the object is to evoke the sense of pity, fear, importance, or probability. -- XIX

Not themes.

Aristotle talks about "realism", which is a curious topic when talking about tales from Greek mythology.

Further, if it be objected that the description is not true to fact, the poet may perhaps reply, "But the objects are as they ought to be"; just as Sophocles said that he drew men as they ought to be; Euripides, as they are. In this way the objection may be met. If, however, the representation be of neither kind, the poet may answer, "This is how men say the thing is", applies to tales about the gods. It may well be that these stories are not higher than fact nor yet true to fact: they are, very possibly, what Xenophanes says of them. -- XXV

Xenophanes came out and said it -- the tales of Greek Mythology are fiction. Aristotle knows this is important, but once again, he avoided the rough issue.

Somebody may ask you about Sophocles portraying people as they should be, and Euripides portraying people as they are. Sophocles shows Oedipus as gracious, capable, and altruistic. Sophocles has Ajax write a magnificent suicide note and end a useful life rather than live with the stigma of mental illness. Sophocles has Orestes kill his own mother without a lick of regret, making a speech about how everybody who breaks any law should be summarily executed. Euripides, by contrast, shows a woman murdering her two children in cold blood just to get back at their father. You can have fun examining this further.

I think I understand.

Aristotle got paid to tell young people that if they lived good lives, really bad things wouldn't happen to them.

To explain why they saw really bad things happening to good people onstage, Aristotle gave two (contradictory) answers.

1. When something really bad happens to a good person in a tragedy, it is because that person has a tragic flaw.

2. When something really bad happens to a good person in a tragedy, it is just make-believe. It is so you can have a good scare and a good cry. This gets these emotions out of your system. You can go back to the real world, where life is fair.

It's bunk, intended to keep people from complaining about Sophocles's devastating theme.

5. Today

Aristotle may have been the first schoolteacher to smokescreen Sophocles's message that the gods are maybe malicious. He may have thought he was right to do so. Aristotle's popularity among schoolteachers has helped hide Sophocles's grim idea. Even today, students are forced to write essays about "tragic flaws" and "purging pity and fear".

Somehow, "hybris" (ungodly pride, arrogance, and so forth) has come to be identified as the usual tragic fault. I cannot understand why -- the idea does not seem to be Aristotle's. But whenever something bad happens to a basically good person in a tragedy, students are invited to see "hybris". ("Hubris" is the same word; the Greek letter "upsilon" looks like our "Y" and is its origin, but the sound was more like the "uhh" that I make when I have no idea what to say.) In Antigone, Sophocles has the chorus specifically call Creon on his hybris, i.e., his impious decree "intended to promote national security".

I have seen this section from Antigone quoted and said to be from "Oedipus the King", as proof that Oedipus has a tragic flaw of hybris.

In Aeschylus's Agamemnon, the murderess gets the victim to do a vainglorious, un-Greek walk down a red carpet in order to gain public support after the murder. Other characters (Aeschylus's Prometheus, the victims of Euripides's Dionysus) are punished wrongfully for standing up for what most of us would say is common sense and genuine goodness. It is hard to generalize this. Interestingly, I can't find the idea of "hybris" in Aristotle's "Poetics".

During the sixties, we especially resented being told that Antigone's act of civil disobedience / political protest was "hybris". You can't defend yourself against an accusation of "hybris". I am an honest physician who engages in public debates. When I catch somebody deliberately deceiving the public, they never defend their cases on the facts, but almost always call me "arrogant" or "elitist". (If you have no case, shout "hybris!") Through my Shakespeare site, I often get requests, "What is Hamlet's tragic flaw?", etc., etc. I tell people that they're asking the wrong question, and to look instead at what the author is really saying about life.

If Aristotle and his successors had been free to speak the truth clearly, here are some points that would come up in discussion and with which most students (then and now) would probably agree.

In our world, very bad things do sometimes happen to very good people. Your chief security comes from what people know you can do well. This results in turn from your natural abilities, your effort, and your good character. It's safest, and the best strategy, to try to be a good person.
It's fun to be scared at shows, and to cry. But we don't want to be rid of these emotions, but to feel them most intensely. Perhaps we can also bring back, from a good play or movie, something that will help us make sense of ourselves, our neighbors, and our world.
Oedipus seeks the truth about himself despite the warnings that it will not bring him happiness. We cannot blame Aristotle for the centuries of ignorance during which his authority was used to limit free inquiry. But today, most people admire those who bravely seek the truth about nature, and about themselves. It is a modern, rather than an Aristotelian, theme.
Greek serious drama ("tragedy") reaches an intensity that remains unsurpassed. Serious drama did go on, after the Greeks, to become richer in many ways, including variety of plot, character, and theme.
Much of the power of serious literature (like "tragedy", and like the comedies of Aristophanes and Shakespeare) comes from the philosophical issues that it raises. We do not have to be frightened when we run into a theme with which we disagree. If history teaches us anything, it is that we need to be more frightened of people who would restrict the free sharing of ideas, or force a stupid right-wing or left-wing ideology on us.
Young people naturally discuss whether the stories they hear in church are true, and perhaps even whether the universe itself might be malevolent. (Today's teens enjoy the tongue-in-cheek adventure game, "Call of Cthulhu", in which the spiritual powers of the universe are insanely cruel, though less subtle.) Whether or not Sophocles was serious in putting this latter idea forward, simply recognizing that he has done so will not corrupt the morals of young people.
Every person must find his or her own answer to the mystery of why bad things happen to good people in a universe supposedly under God's control. Yet even if people reach different conclusions, and express them freely, people can usually still live and work together in peace and good-will.
Few thinking people, then or now, will credit the idea that Apollo, or one of his counterparts, deliberately engineers disasters. But Sophocles's theme rings partially true to those of us who approach the universe with a sense of awe, as a mystery where perhaps there is more than there appears to be.

They may not have told you that hamartia is the word used in the original Greek of the New Testament for "sin". The King James Version has 172 instances.

Jim Donahoe's essay on Oedipus's tragic flaw is no longer online. "In the end however, Oedipus becomes more humble and accepts his fate. He becomes a better person and is better off after his fall."

Dr. Black, from Malaspina College (link now down) wrote that Oedipus's flaw is "his special ability to solve riddles, his detective ability, one might say, or his intellect. Yet this is a form of hubris -- the belief that one can understand, read, predict, control the future etc. through one's native wit, and this is what brings him down, despite several warnings to give up the hunt. Reason = Apollo."

Myth Man. "Oedipus... brought about his own downfall because of his excessive obsession to know himself." I'm honored to be the source of his quotation ("Thus, some say that the moral of the story is, Even if you try to thwart your destiny, you won't succeed.").

Link is now down. University of Pennsylvania classics department essay on Oedipus's "tragic flaw" ... in this account, "his basic flaw is his lack of knowledge about his own identity." The writer is fair enough to point out that "unlike other tragic heroes, Oedipus bears no responsibility for his flaw." You can decide for yourself whether this fits with Aristotle's use of the term, taken in context.

Ian Johnston -- also offers a free translation (thanks!) Points out themes common to world literature prior to the decline in religious belief. "Who does control our lives? What sort of relationship do we have to that divine force?" Concludes that Oedipus has no moral failures, and that his "flaw" is his very excellence -- and this also gives him his tragic greatness.

Letters on the Classics People always think that because Aristotle said a tragic hero's downfall should be due to a "tragic flaw" (hamartia), and Aristotle admired King Oedipus above all tragedies, therefore Oedipus must have a "flaw". [This is a false premise under Aristotle's very own logic.] And so they have struggled to find one!... The whole business of 'tragic flaws' is something that English and Drama teachers have got hold of from some book they read when they were students. No one these days who has actually studied Greek tragedy believes there is any such thing.

Tragic Flaws . ... I realized something quite interesting: just about everything Aristotle says about tragic heroes is wrong. Aristotle had postulated the principle of the tragic flaw in tragedy. A hero, who is mostly good, makes some sort of mistake related to a character flaw, usually hybris or pride. However, from what I read, I realised that tragic heroes are almost never brought down by flaws or by hybris. In fact, in most cases, the protagonist is actually destroyed by his or her virtues. In puzzling over this, I realised that Aristotle is, in fact,not trying to explain exactly what is happening in tragedy but what should be happening. He is answering a very specific challenge to the very existence of tragedy presented by Plato in the Republic Book III. Plato had argued that tragedy corrupted the audience. Aristotle's development of the tragic flaw is a response to this challenge. The author has a Ph.D. in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy.

Cyber Essays to help students. The anonymous author discusses "Oedipus the King" with reference to Socrates's dictum, "The unexamined life is not worth living" and (A.A. "Winnie the Pooh" Milne's dictum) "When ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise." Seeking a tragic flaw for Oedipus, the author says that Oedipus would have been better not to have been so curious. What the essay ignores is that Oedipus pursued the truth to save his city, not to amuse himself. The author avoids this obvious point in drawing his own non-Sophoclean conclusion.

"It's better not to know." You'll hear this again from anti-science college-campus types on both the far-right and the far-left, who want to reshape society down ideological lines. You'll have to decide for yourself about this. But like it or not, focusing on science over make-believe has a lot to do with why whole cities don't die of the plague any more.

Free School Paper on Oedipus's tragic flaw.
Free College Essays on Oedipus's tragic flaw.

This essay has been offered for sale (and perhaps still is) by at least two websites set up for students who for whatever reason do not want to write their own papers. I have received no response to my protests.

Teachers: Click here to begin your search for online essays intended for would-be plagiarists. "Dishonesty was your tragic flaw, kid!" Good luck.

turnitin.com -- anti-plagiary software

Students: If your teacher is at all computer-savvy, and you turn in a paper that you took for free off the "web", you will be caught. Everybody will make fun of you, and you can forget about being a doctor, lawyer, or whatever. That'll be your "tragic flaw." Ha ha!

Arthur Miller wrote, "The flaw, or crack in the character [of Oedipus], is really nothing -- and need be nothing -- but his inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status. Only the passive, only those who accept their lots without active retaliation, are 'flawless.' Most of us are in that category." Miller adds that "the terror and the fear that is classically associated with tragedy" comes from questioning the unquestioned. Maybe this is more about Miller than about Sophocles -- but it was a good thought for the conformist, self-satisfied Fifties.

Productions

Shakespeare Company film
1967 production with good notes
Historical productions
German
Culver City -- modern-dress
Oedipus -- heroic-fantasy style painting
Radomir Perica illustration -- sphinx having the last laugh
Jan Morrison -- focus on themes

The Classics Pages -- Oedipus. Best online Oedipus site.

Iokaste -- contemporary novel about Oedipus's wife-mother. Release date Sept. 2004.

I'm Ed. You can visit me at my own page and follow the links from there to my autopsy page, my notes on disease (the largest one-man online medical show, helping individuals around the world), my Adventure Gaming sites, or any of the other sites.

You can E-mail me at erf@kcumb.edu.

Brown University, Department of English -- my home base, 1969-1973.

Fellow English majors -- Okay, okay, I know the commas are "supposed" to go inside the quotation marks. This became standard to protect fragile bits of movable type. My practice lets me know I'm the one who's typed a particular document.

Teens: Stay away from drugs, work yourself extremely hard in class or at your trade, play sports if and only if you like it, tell the grownups who support you that you love them (no matter what the circumstances), and get out of abusive relationships by any means. The best thing anybody can say about you is, "That kid likes to work too hard and isn't taking it easy like other young people."

Greek tragedies include some characters who commit suicide. It is almost always a bad idea. Among young people who made serious attempts and failed, 99% said a year later that they are glad they failed.

Thanks for visiting. Health and friendship.

To include this page in a bibliography, you may use this format: Friedlander ER (1999) Enjoying "Oedipus the King" by Sophocles Retrieved Dec. 25, 2003 from http://www.pathguy.com/oedipus.htm

For Modern Language Association sticklers, the name of the site itself is "The Pathology Guy" and the Sponsoring Institution or Organization is Ed Friedlander MD.

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"What is there about the classics that would interest a contemporary American?"

Visitors send me this question from time to time.

If being a "contemporary American" means being focused on dirty TV sitcoms, greed, casual sex, big-money sports, shout-and-pout grievance-group politics, televangelism, professional wrestling, crybabies, slot machines, postmodernism, political action committees, and "war on drugs" profiteering... then the answer is probably "Nothing."

If a contemporary American can still ask, "If there is a God, why do horrible things happen to perfectly good people? And how do we explain this to children?" -- then the answer is maybe that "Sophocles deals with basic human issues."

Afterwards...

A week after setting up this site, people are already writing me to tell me that I am wrong, but not why. Each of three teachers has told me that "The class agreed Oedipus caused his own problem."

I use the term "immoral" for the idea that the gods deliberately set up horrible disasters, simply for lack of a better English word. And it seems appropriate to me. ("Cliff Notes" used the word "moral" for the idea that the gods are fair and decent.) If you can think of a better one, please let me know.

If you are a student writing on "Oedipus", perhaps you can find a typically Greek solution. Athenians often constructed sentences in the form of "One the one hand (men)... and on the other hand (de)...." Argue both sides. It'll be fun and prevent trouble.

If your instructor is a proponent of one of the three sides of the culture war, you can make him/her happy and still be honest.

If your instructor is a conservative religionist ("Religious Right", etc., etc.), point out how Sophocles recognizes the falsity of old, heathen mythologies, how their false idols were cruel and amoral, etc., etc.

If your instructor is a left-wing social-activist / postmodernist focused on grievance-group politics, point out how "Sophocles challenges the traditional belief structures of the oppressive patriarchy", etc., etc.

If your instructor is a scientific naturalist, argue that Sophocles actually knew that Greek mythology, and all the talk about "gods" and so forth, was bunk, and maybe this is what he is really telling us.

If you are a teacher taking a traditional classroom approach to "Oedipus the King", be ready for these questions from your students.

"Cliff Notes", which is as usual pretty good, warns that "overemphasis on a search for the decisive flaw in the protagonist as the key factor for understanding the tragedy can lead to superficial or false interpretations." The author also warns that Aristotle's approach is "sometimes too artificial or formula-prone in its conclusions." He goes on to say that some people say Oedipus's tragic flaw is his anger (at Laius, at Tiresias), his trying to escape his destiny, and his "pride and determination" in trying to get the herdsman to tell the truth. (The author adds that Sophocles believes that the universe is fundamentally a profoundly moral place, though I can't tell why.) Why all the different supposed "tragic flaws"?
If a lone man is hassled and then physically attacked by a group of thugs on a deserted stretch of highway, especially when the area is not patrolled by fast police cars, he is much safer if he hits back than if he runs or begs for mercy. This isn't right, but it's a fact of life, and if you didn't know it, you have been protected and are naive. Sophocles presents Oedipus's killing of Laius as self-defense. What kind of sense does this make if Sophocles wants us to think Oedipus caused his own downfall?
Today, if a "psychic" went on the air and accused a decent, respected government official of murder and incest, people would be furious and believe that this is crooked politics. Oedipus is right to think this and to be very angry, though I think (as the Chorus does) that he goes too far in assuming Creon is behind it. Why would anybody think Oedipus should NOT be suspicious and angry?
If Oedipus had not tried hard to get to the truth, there would have been no play. Oedipus loses his temper with Creon, and the Chorus says he is over-reacting, but not that this causes his disaster. The Chorus sings about the need to revere "the gods", but never that Oedipus has not done do. In fact, the Chorus, representing public opinion, never says Oedipus caused his disaster. This is in spectacular contrast to the ending of "Antigone", where the Chorus sings about Creon's hybris ("I refuse to allow proper religious burial rites for a man who endangered National Security, this will make him an example and keep our people safe") and how it caused his ruin ("Religion and conscience and decency and human love take precedence over supposed National Security.")
Does the word hybris even appear in Aristotle's "Poetics"?
The site went up in 1998, and has proved very popular. Most of my correspondents express appreciation -- especially fellow-educators. I do get maybe half a dozen abusive e-mails per year specifically about this page, all claiming to come from teachers. (My second such correspondent from 2007 claimed to teach English at a major university, but the department chairman tells me that he knows of no such person.) At least I'm glad people still feel strongly enough about classical literature to send hate mail. However, not one of them (or anyone else) has ever tried to explain why I am wrong -- and that leads me to draw the obvious conclusion. "If you have no case, shout hybris." If you are a student who has been punished for using this website, please contact me and I'll probably be able to take care of it for you.

Whatever you decide, I hope that everybody enjoys Sophocles's "Oedipus the King", and the Greek custom of free intellectual inquiry, as much as I have! Health and friendship!

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Arthur Miller From The Times February 12, 2005

The American playwright who wrote Death of a Salesman, withstood the anti-communist witch-hunts and married Marilyn Monroe

Arthur Miller will be remembered by some as the intellectual who made a famously unsuitable marriage to Marilyn Monroe, and by others as the staunch liberal who risked imprisonment by defying the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities. But his main legacy is the series of plays — Death of a Salesman and The Crucible prime among them — that had established him as his nation’s leading dramatist by the mid-1950s and continue to be revived and studied throughout the world.

Miller said that he saw himself as “a sort of prophet”, heir to a tradition of civic responsibility and political involvement which, he claimed, went back to the Greek playwrights. For him, it was the function of drama not merely to ask “great questions” but to seek to “create a higher consciousness” and even to “change the world”. Whether or not he achieved quite that, he certainly brought a unique blend of intelligence, moral passion and dramatic skill to many of the 20th century’s central concerns, from the lure of materialism to the importance of the individual conscience and the significance of the Holocaust.

The dramatist-to-be was born in 1915, the son of affluent Jewish-American parents, and brought up in the then prosperous New York district of Harlem. But in 1929 his father’s coat-manufacturing business, which at one time had employed nearly a thousand workers, was hit by the Depression, and the family was eventually forced to move to humbler quarters in Brooklyn.

The impact of this period on Miller cannot be overestimated. For him, the Depression was a “millenarian moment” matched in importance in American history only by the Civil War. As he once said: “Until 1929 I thought things were pretty solid and somebody was in charge, probably a businessman and a realistic, no- nonsense fellow. In 1929 he jumped out of the window. It was bewildering.”

The Depression was to feature in several of Miller’s plays, notably The American Clock and The Price, both of which see it as painful yet cleansing proof of the fragility not only of the social contract but also of family ties. According to his autobiography, Timebends, the disruption extended to his own family, with his mother showing a “sneering contempt” for the husband whom she blamed for their impoverishment.

The failure of his father’s business meant that there was no money to send Miller to university in 1932 after he graduated from high school — where in any case he had shone more on the sporting field than in the classroom. So he became a $15-a-week shipping clerk in an automobile parts warehouse. He began to read voraciously, developing an interest both in politics and in literature. Before long he had embraced socialism, and though his thinking was always more in the liberal-humanist tradition of Emerson, he began to call himself a Marxist. He also secured himself a place at the University of Michigan, and there he started to write plays, paying his way largely with the money these proceeded to make from the college’s literary prizes.

On his graduation in 1938 Miller joined the Federal Theatre Project, a New Deal agency established to provide jobs for actors, writers and theatre technicians. But with Congress nervous of communist infiltration, the scheme was discontinued before he could finish The Golden Years, a play relating Cortéz’s conquest of the Aztec empire to events in contemporary Europe.

Miller then took a job in the Brooklyn Navy Yard — an experience on which he was to draw in A View from the Bridge, his play about Italian longshoremen — and made his first marriage, in 1940, to Mary Slattery, the Catholic daughter of an insurance salesman.

With a knee injury sustained in high school keeping him out of the Armed Forces during the Second World War, Miller continued to live, work and write in Brooklyn. For a while during the early 1940s he wrote 28-minute storytelling radio scripts for CBS, sponsored by companies such as DuPont and American Steel (“I only worked for the best”).

These broadcasts — recordings of which unexpectedly surfaced in 2003 — were written to order on subjects that he had quickly to assimilate and turn into drama. They ranged from the story of the discovery of penicillin and current wartime heroism to tales about historical figures, and in writing them against a deadline, Miller learnt some of the disciplines and possibilities of his trade. “My model was the book of Genesis. Read that and within about a page and a half you have mankind; that’s the way to tell a story.”

Some of these scripts were in verse, and Miller later recalled that it was thanks to actors of the calibre of Orson Welles and their training in Shakespeare that he could use the conciseness of verse without it sounding arch, and without the audience even realising that they were listening to verse.

His social conscience, too, was stirring. A three-week visit to an early plastic surgery and burns unit, for instance, led him to write a memo to the station, arguing that the broadcasts should give a more realistic idea of the suffering of war, because anything less dishonoured the men they were trying to support.

In 1944 Miller saw his play The Man Who Had All the Luck open on Broadway and close after only four performances. This was, however, followed by All My Sons, a masterpiece which won the Drama Critics’ Circle Award for 1947. Two years later came Death of a Salesman, which ran on Broadway for 742 performances, won the Pulitzer prize and the Tony award for best play, and established Miller as one of the major dramatists of his generation.

Both plays dealt with themes that were to recur in Miller’s work, the damage wrought by materialist values and the fragmentation of the family. In All My Sons, the protagonist is a businessman who has allowed defective parts to be fitted to aircraft, thus causing a series of fatal crashes. The consequences come home to him with truly tragic inevitability. In Death of a Salesman, the protagonist is Willy Loman, the commercial traveller and archetypal American dreamer. Whether or not Loman really demonstrated that the common man was a fit subject for tragedy — as the author himself suggested in the most important of his many essays about the theatre — he remains the best-known of Miller’s characters.

As Miller grew more prominent, his left-wing sympathies increasingly became the object of suspicion and attack. His adaptation of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, staged in 1950, was rightly seen as a swipe at McCarthyite persecution. But that was a minor provocation beside The Crucible, which retold the story of the Salem witchhunts and celebrated the “terrible marvel” of victims prepared to die rather than lie. Retelling this tale during the fevered period of America’s 20th-century witch-hunts, this won Miller a Tony award for the best play of 1953, but also the enmity of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities.

Thanks to the committee’s influence, Miller was denied a passport to attend the opening of The Crucible in Belgium and had funding withdrawn from a film he was making about violence among young people in New York.

A direct confrontation with the committee was delayed until 1956, however, by which time Miller had become a nationwide celebrity for somewhat surprising reasons. The earnest intellectual had divorced his wife and was about to marry the actress Marilyn Monroe. Eager to trade on the publicity this generated, the committee summoned Miller — only to have him refuse to name the people he had seen at a communist writers’ meeting in 1949. Unlike Miller, his friend and colleague Elia Kazan, who had directed All My Sons and Death of a Salesman, did name names during the McCarthy period, causing tension in an already complex professional relationship.

For his refusal Miller was cited for contempt of Congress. In 1957 he was brought before the House, fined $500 and given a suspended 30-day prison sentence: a conviction that was overturned when his appeal came before the Supreme Court a year later.

This experience found dramatic expression in After the Fall, a semi-autobiographical play produced in 1964, as did his relationship to Marilyn Monroe. His marriage to the deeply insecure and demanding actress — a woman “dancing at the edge of oblivion”, as he put it in Timebends — had predictably proved to be a difficult and often stormy one, and it ended in divorce in 1961. In 1962 he was married for the third and last time, to the Austrian-born photographer Ingeborg Morath, a relationship that allowed the often despairing After the Fall to end in an affirmation of the importance of love.

Miller became president of PEN International in 1965, and was primarily responsible for transforming it from an inconsequential literary club into what he called “the conscience of the world writing community”: It was, for instance, due to his intervention that Wole Soyinka was saved from execution during the Biafran war and Fernando Arrabal from imprisonment in Franco’s Spain. Right into his seventies, Miller was a remarkably energetic, outgoing, good-humoured man, a tireless crusader for human rights as well as an active playwright.

While critics tend to agree that his most vital creative period stretched from All My Sons in 1947 to A View from the Bridge in 1956, his later plays, notably The Price, The American Clock and The Archbishop’s Ceiling, have their admirers. His adaptation of Fania Fenelon’s Playing for Time, in which Vanessa Redgrave played an Auschwitz inmate, was widely regarded as one of the most distinguished dramas ever written for television.

However, his reputation in recent years, though robust in the academies of both countries, has proved more resilient among British than among American theatregoers. The National Theatre alone has revived Death of a Salesman, The American Clock, After the Fall, A View from the Bridge and, on no fewer than three occasions, The Crucible, in most cases with conspicuous success. Indeed, Miller’s disenchantment with what he called “the brutal inanity of Broadway ” explains why two of his most recent plays, The Ride Down Mount Morgan and The Last Yankee received their world premieres in London in 1991 and 1993 respectively.

His Broken Glass was staged at the National Theatre in 1994, and his fascination with memory continued with Mr Peter’s Connections, staged in London in 2000. His last plays were Resurrection Blues (2002), a satire on how the media would cope with the Second Coming, and Finishing the Picture (2004) inspired by the troubled shooting of the film The Misfits (1961), featuring Monroe herself and Clark Gable.

Some have attacked Miller for writing (in the words of the critic Robert Brustein) “old-fashioned, social-psychological melodramas” on the theme of political or family responsibility. Certainly, many of his plays are furnaces or, as he put it, crucibles in which an exemplary individual’s principles are tested and judged according to their integrity and their altruism. And certainly Miller continued to communicate an unfashionable belief in the potential of man — and the key figures are almost always male — for good as well as ill. As he once said: “The European playwrights can tell me it’s hopeless, and by and large it is; but it’s not 100 per cent hopeless is all I’m about to tell you.”

There were a son and daughter of Miller’s first marriage. His third wife died in 2002. They had one daughter, Rebecca Miller, a film director, who married the actor Daniel Day-Lewis after he starred in a film version of The Crucible in 1996, for which Miller himself wrote the film adaptation.

Arthur Miller, dramatist, was born on October 17, 1915. He died on February 10, 2005, aged 89.

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Analysis of Wilfred Owen's Anthem for a Doomed Youth

Julie Moore

Published November 11, 2009 by:

Wilfred Owen's Anthem for a Doomed Youth is exactly that, an anthem ( a solemn song) to commemorate the "children" that will die in this war. By using the word anthem, he calls to mind the glory and honor of a national anthem, however; he goes on to explain that there is no honor or glory in death. Written in sonnet form, it is an elegy for the dead. The octave deals with auditory images of war and death and the sestet deals with more visual images. Wilfred Owen masterfully uses both imagery and figurative language to convey his lament for these young people who will die.

In the octet of this poem (the first eight lines), Owen catalogues all the images of death, from the "passing bells" (1), "anger of the guns" (2), rattle of guns (3), funeral prayers (4), "wailing shells" (7), "bugles and sad shires" (8). Many of these images are personified as well, such as the rattling guns and wailing shells. These images will be the funeral that the boys get, not the real one that they deserve. This personification contributes to the harshness of the images and creates auditory images for the reader. The reader can hear the sensory images. However, these images are also set directly against religious imagery, to further emphasize the destructiveness of war. The passing bells, prayers, choirs, and candles emphasize the preciousness of human life. Owen may go so far as to suggest that even religion is helpless against such a powerful destructive force as war. This tone is suggested by the fact that prayers and bells are set against a word like "mockery" (5). Just the term "hasty orisons" (4) has a somewhat disrespectful tone. Owen's use of both similes and metaphors further emphasize the meaning of the poem. The first line jolts the reader with the simile that these young people "die as cattle" (1). He implies with this phrase that war causes human beings to treat others as less than human. In line three, the reader can hear the sound imagery of the "stuttering rifles' rapid rattle" (3). The word "anger" in line 2 also emphasizes the destructive hatred of war. "Choirs of wailing shells" is a powerful metaphor in line 7 contrasting the world of war and the world of God.

For the rest of the poem various religious images abound. For example, the word candles would call to mind the church candles, but they also mean the candles lit in rooms where coffins lie. "Holy glimmers of goodbyes" (line 9) combines religious imagery with the idea of death. In the "pallor/pall" half rhyme of line 11, these two words combine in one line to show the seriousness of the situation. Young people are dying in war, and it is tragic. The "flowers" of line 11 are also a double-edged sword. Flowers are given on very happy, momentous occasions, but they are also in abundance at solemn occasions like funerals.

However, the last line in the sonnet remains the most powerful in re-affirming the themes and images of death in this poem. The "dusk is slow" (11) and the "drawing-down of the blinds" (12) signifies the ultimate death.

The use of a traditional form like a sonnet only serves to emphasize the seriousness of the subject. Wilfred Owen masterfully juxtaposes images of war and church in order to emphasize the solemnity of the death these boys will face. He uses metaphor and simile as well as auditory and visual images in order to allow the reader to truly experience what these boys will face in death.

Works Cited.

Owen, Wilfred. Anthem for Doomed Youth. Return to Top

Notes on “Dulce Et Decorum Est”

DULCE ET DECORUM EST¹

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares² we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest³ began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots⁴

Of tired, outstripped⁵ Five-Nines⁶ that dropped behind.

Gas!⁷ Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets⁸just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime⁹ . . .

Dim, through the misty panes¹⁰ and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering,¹¹ choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud¹²

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest¹³

To children ardent¹⁴ for some desperate glory,

The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est

Pro patria mori.¹⁵

8 October 1917 - March, 1918

1. DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country

2 .rockets which were sent up to burn with a brilliant glare to light up men and other targets in the area between the front lines (See illustration, page 118 of Out in the Dark.)

3. a camp away from the front line where exhausted soldiers might rest for a few days, or longer

4. the noise made by the shells rushing through the air

5. outpaced, the soldiers have struggled beyond the reach of these shells which are now falling behind them as they struggle away from the scene of battle

6. Five-Nines - 5.9 calibre explosive shells

7. poison gas. From the symptoms it would appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The filling of the lungs with fluid had the same effects as when a person drowned

8. the early name for gas masks

9. a white chalky substance which can burn live tissue

10. the glass in the eyepieces of the gas masks

11. Owen probably meant flickering out like a candle or gurgling like water draining down a gutter, referring to the sounds in the throat of the choking man, or it might be a sound partly like stuttering and partly like gurgling

12. normally the regurgitated grass that cows chew; here a similar looking material was issuing from the soldier's mouth

13. high zest - idealistic enthusiasm, keenly believing in the rightness of the idea

14. keen

15. see note 1

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Shell Shock during World War One By Professor Joanna Bourke

By the end of World War One the British Army had dealt with 80,000 cases of shell shock, including those of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Joanna Bourke explores how the army tackled this extreme trauma, and how it was regarded by those back home.

Soldier with shell shock

On 7 July 1916, Arthur Hubbard painfully set pen to paper in an attempt to explain to his mother why he was no longer in France. He had been taken from the battlefields and deposited in the East Suffolk and Ipswich Hospital suffering from 'shell shock'. In his words, his breakdown was related to witnessing 'a terrible sight that I shall never forget as long as I live'. He told his mother:

'We had strict orders not to take prisoners, no matter if wounded my first job was when I had finished cutting some of their wire away, to empty my magazine on 3 Germans that came out of one of their deep dugouts. bleeding badly, and put them out of misery. They cried for mercy, but I had my orders, they had no feeling whatever for us poor chaps... it makes my head jump to think about it.' [Punctuation and syntax as originally written]

'He was buried, dug himself out, and during the subsequent retreat was almost killed by machine gun fire.'

Hubbard had 'gone over the top' at the Battle of the Somme. While he managed to fight as far as the fourth line of trenches, by 3.30pm practically his whole battalion had been wiped out by German artillery. He was buried, dug himself out, and during the subsequent retreat was almost killed by machine gun fire. Within this landscape of horror, he collapsed.

Aerial shot of a battlefield on the Western Front ©

Arthur Hubbard was one of millions of men who suffered psychological trauma as a result of their war experiences. Symptoms ranged from uncontrollable diarrhea to unrelenting anxiety. Soldiers who had bayoneted men in the face developed hysterical tics of their own facial muscles. Stomach cramps seized men who knifed their foes in the abdomen. Snipers lost their sight. Terrifying nightmares of being unable to withdraw bayonets from the enemies' bodies persisted long after the slaughter.

The dreams might occur 'right in the middle of an ordinary conversation' when 'the face of a Boche that I have bayoneted, with its horrible gurgle and grimace, comes sharply into view', an infantry captain complained. An inability to eat or sleep after the slaughter was common. Nightmares did not always occur during the war. World War One soldiers like Rowland Luther did not suffer until after the armistice when (he admitted) he 'cracked up' and found himself unable to eat, deliriously re-living his experiences of combat.

'...everyone had a 'breaking point': weak or strong, courageous or cowardly - war frightened everyone witless...'

These were not exceptional cases. It was clear to everyone that large numbers of combatants could not cope with the strain of warfare. By the end of World War One, the army had dealt with 80,000 cases of 'shell shock'. As early as 1917, it was recognised that war neuroses accounted for one-seventh of all personnel discharged for disabilities from the British Army. Once wounds were excluded, emotional disorders were responsible for one-third of all discharges. Even more worrying was the fact that a higher proportion of officers were suffering in this way. According to one survey published in 1917, while the ratio of officers to men at the front was 1:30, among patients in hospitals specialising in war neuroses, the ratio of officers to men was 1:6. What medical officers quickly realised was that everyone had a 'breaking point': weak or strong, courageous or cowardly - war frightened everyone witless.

A medical officer examining a recruit ©

More difficult, however, was understanding what caused some panic-stricken men to suffer extremes of trauma. In the early years of World War One, shell shock was believed to be the result of a physical injury to the nerves. In other words, shell shock was the result of being buried alive or exposed to heavy bombardment. The term itself had been coined, in 1917, by a medical officer called Charles Myers. But Myers rapidly became unhappy with the term, recognising that many men suffered the symptoms of shell shock without having even been in the front lines. As a consequence, medical officers increasingly began emphasising psychological factors as providing sufficient cause for breakdown. As the president of the British Psycho-Analytic Association, Ernest Jones, explained: war constituted 'an official abrogation of civilised standards' in which men were not only allowed, but encouraged:

'...to indulge in behaviour of a kind that is throughout abhorrent to the civilised mind.... All sorts of previously forbidden and hidden impulses, cruel, sadistic, murderous and so on, are stirred to greater activity, and the old intrapsychical conflicts which, according to Freud, are the essential cause of all neurotic disorders, and which had been dealt with before by means of 'repression' of one side of the conflict are now reinforced, and the person is compelled to deal with them afresh under totally different circumstances.'

'...a soldier who suffered a neurosis had not lost his reason but was labouring under the weight of too much reason...'

Consequently, the 'return to the mental attitude of civilian life' could spark off severe psychological trauma. The authors of one of the standard books on shell shock went so far as to point out that a soldier who suffered a neurosis had not lost his reason but was labouring under the weight of too much reason: his senses were 'functioning with painful efficiency'.

Four-fifths of shell shock cases were never able to return to military duty ©

Nevertheless, how were these men to be cured of their painful afflictions? From the start, the purpose of treatment was to restore the maximum number of men to duty as quickly as possible. During World War One, four-fifths of men who had entered hospital suffering shell shock were never able to return to military duty: it was imperative that such high levels of 'permanent ineffectives' were reduced. However, the shift from regarding breakdown as 'organic' (that is, an injury to the nerves) to viewing it as psychological had inevitable consequences in terms of treatment. If breakdown was a 'paralysis of the nerves', then massage, rest, dietary regimes and electric shock treatment were invoked. If a psychological source was indicated, the 'talking cure', hypnosis, and rest would speed recovery. In all instances, occupational training and the inculcation of 'masculinity' were highly recommended. As the medical superintendent at one military hospital in York put it, although the medical officer must show sympathy, the patient 'must be induced to face his illness in a manly way'.

'...their reputations as soldiers and men had been dealt a severe blow.'

Sympathy was only rarely forthcoming. Sufferers had no choice but to acknowledge that their reputations as soldiers and men had been dealt a severe blow. After a major bombardment or particularly bloody attack, if the combatant had acquitted himself adequately, signs of emotional 'weakness' could be overlooked, but in the midst of the fray, the attitude was much less sympathetic. 'Go 'ide yerself, you bloody little coward!', cursed one Tommy at a frightened soldier. When the shell shocked men returned home, things were not much better. Men arriving at Netley Hospital (for servicemen suffering shell shock) were greeted with silence: people were described as hanging their heads in 'inexplicable shame'. No-one better described the mix of shame and anger experienced by the war-damaged than the poet, Siegfried Sassoon. In October 1917, while he was at Craiglockhart, one of the most famous hospitals for curing officers with war neuroses, he wrote a poem, simply called 'Survivors':

No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain / Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk. / Of course they're 'longing to go out again', - / These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk. / They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed / Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died, - / Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud / Of glorious war that shatter'd their pride... / Men who went out to battle, grim and glad; / Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.

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January 22, 1963

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

By HARRISON E. SALISBURY

New York -- Two or three weeks ago Leonid F. Illyiehev, the Soviet propaganda boss, made a rather plaintive speech to the young writers of Moscow. Please, he said, in effect, there are other subjects besides "the camps" to write about.

Suddenly, in Moscow, it would appear, everyone wants to write about life in the Stalin concentration camps. The reason for this is a rather short, sparsely told, eloquent, explosive, work by Alexander Solzhenitsyn which today reaches the American public in English translation.

Solzhenitsyn is a 44-year-old mathematics teacher in the old Russian town of Ryazan who spent eight years in Stalinís concentration camps. "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" is his first literary work, the simple story of one day in a Soviet concentration camp.

There is hardly a detail in Solzhenitsyn's story which, in itself is new. The cruelty, the falseness of the charges, the animal fight for survival, the debasement, the cynical grafting, the brutalizing, the sentences stretching into infinity (or death), the hunger, the suffering, the cold--all this is familiar.

Changes Perception

But the same might have been said of conditions in Russian prisons before Dostoyevsky wrote his "Notes, from the House of the Dead." The story of political prisoners in Siberia was well known before George Kennan wrote his famous "Siberia and the Exile System" in 1891.

Yet, each of these works changed our perception of the known facts. So it is with Solzhenitsyn's remarkable tale. In the Soviet Union, of course, it has been a sensation. Until the November issue of the literary journal, Novy Mir, appeared with Solzhenitsyn's story, no Soviet writer had tackled this most terrible and characteristic feature of the Stalin era. (It took Premier Khrushchev's personal okay to get the story published.) Small wonder that all 95,000 copies of Novy Mir vanished almost before they hit the newsstands and that they now sell for $10 a copy.

Solzhenitsyn has written no mere propagandistic expose. He has created a small, almost flawless classic employing the eloquence of reticence and understatement in a manner which even the fumbling of hurried translation cannot obscure.

Ivan Denisovich Shukov, his central figure, is a simple peasant. His "crime" was to escape from the Germans who took him prisoner in 1943 and return to his own lines. Had he not said he had been in German hands he would have gotten a medal. By telling the truth he was sentenced to a concentration camp as a "spy." Had he not confessed being a "spy" he would have been shot. Neither he nor his NKVD interrogator had ingenuity enough to figure out what kind of "spying" he was supposed to do.

Now in a prison camp resembling one of the Karanga camps where Solzhenitsyn himself was confined, Ivan strives to keep alive in a milieu-ruled, as an old inmate says, "by the law of the taiga," or as we would put it, the law of the jungle.

Who are the other prisoners? One is a Soviet Navy captain. His misfortune was that a British admiral sent him a Christmas present. One man is a Baptist. His crime? Being a Baptist. A youngster took a pail of milk to some Ukrainian outlaws--and drew a 25-year sentence. In every labor gang of 20 to 30 men there are at least five or six "spies." There is even one "genuine spy" in the camp, a Moldavian who actually worked for the Germans. One man was drummed out of the Red Army as the son of a kulak or rich peasant. Later, the officers who drummed him out were shot in the purge.

Everyone cheats. Everyone steals. But there are rules of the game. Only by observing the rules with skill can a man hope to survive. If he fights back like the Naval captain he'll be thrown into the sub-zero guardhouse for 10 days. If he survives his health is ruined. Not more than a year or two of life will remain.

Surviving Is a Triumph

It is not an easy world for Americans to comprehend. As Ivan muses: "How can you expect a man who's warm to understand a man who's cold?" It is a world in which to live through one more day is an achievement. When Shukov has gone through his day he falls asleep in a glow of contentment. It has been a lucky day. He has not been put into the punishment cells. He has not been sent to the open steppe to work in the 20-below zero wind. He's gotten an extra bowl of mush for supper. He's worked at building a wall and gotten pleasure from it. Heís gotten a hacksaw blade into camp without being caught. Heís bought some good tobacco. And he hasn't gotten sick. And the book closes:

"A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day. There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days like that in his stretch....

"Three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days.

"The three extra days were for leap years."

This quiet tale has struck a powerful blow against the return of the horrors of the Stalin system. For Solzhenitsyn's words burn like acid.

Of the two translations neither comes close to reproducing the rough vigor of the author's concentration camp slang. Each has been done with too much haste. Each relies on standard four-letter words rather than the author's salty idiom. However, Ralph Parker's version in the Dutton edition is superior to the patchwork thrown together by Max Hayward and Ronald Hingley for Praeger. The most striking blooper of the Hayward- Hingley translation is to put in the mouths of the prisoners the phrase "Comrade Warder." The prisoners were forbidden, as Solzhenitsyn notes, to call the guards "comrade," which is the customary Soviet greeting. They had to address the guards as "Citizen," removing their hats five paces away and keeping it off two paces beyond the guard.

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Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr (Isayevich)

(b. Dec. 11, 1918, Kislovodsk, Russia [U.S.S.R.]), Russian novelist and historian, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1970 and was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974.

Solzhenitsyn was born into a family of Cossack intellectuals and brought up primarily by his mother (his father was killed in an accident before his birth). He attended the University of Rostov-na-Donu, graduating in mathematics, and took correspondence courses in literature at Moscow State University. He fought in World War II, achieving the rank of captain of artillery; in 1945, however, he was arrested for writing a letter in which he criticized Joseph Stalin and spent eight years in prisons and labour camps, after which he spent three more years in enforced exile. Rehabilitated in 1956, he was allowed to settle in Ryazan, in central Russia, where he became a mathematics teacher and began to write.

Encouraged by the loosening of government restraints on cultural life that was a hallmark of the de-Stalinizing policies of the early 1960s, Solzhenitsyn submitted his short novel Odin den iz zhizni Ivana Denisovicha (1962; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) to the leading Soviet literary periodical Novy Mir ("New World"). The novel quickly appeared in that journal's pages and met with immediate popularity, Solzhenitsyn becoming an instant celebrity. Ivan Denisovich, based on Solzhenitsyn's own experiences, described a typical day in the life of an inmate of a forced-labour camp during the Stalin era. The impression made on the public by the book's simple, direct language and by the obvious authority with which it treated the daily struggles and material hardships of camp life was magnified by its being one of the first Soviet literary works of the post-Stalin era to directly describe such a life. The book produced a political sensation both abroad and in the Soviet Union, where it inspired a number of other writers to produce accounts of their imprisonment under Stalin's regime.

Solzhenitsyn's period of official favour proved to be short-lived, however. Ideological strictures on cultural activity in the Soviet Union tightened with Nikita Khrushchev's fall from power in 1964, and Solzhenitsyn met first with increasing criticism and then with overt harassment from the authorities when he emerged as an eloquent opponent of repressive government policies. After the publication of a collection of his short stories in 1963, he was denied further official publication of his work, and he resorted to circulating them in the form of samizdat ("self-published") literature--i.e., as illegal literature circulated clandestinely--as well as publishing them abroad.

The following years were marked by the foreign publication of several ambitious novels that secured Solzhenitsyn's international literary reputation. V kruge pervom (1968; The First Circle) was indirectly based on his years spent working in a prison research institute as a mathematician. The book traces the varying responses of scientists at work on research for the secret police as they must decide whether to cooperate with the authorities and thus remain within the research prison or to refuse their services and be thrust back into the brutal conditions of the labour camps. Rakovy korpus (1968; Cancer Ward) was based on Solzhenitsyn's hospitalization and successful treatment for terminally diagnosed cancer during his forced exile in Kazakhstan during the mid-1950s. The main character, like Solzhenitsyn himself, was a recently released inmate of the camps.

In 1970 Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but he declined to go to Stockholm to receive the prize for fear he would not be readmitted to the Soviet Union by the government upon his return. His next novel to be published outside the Soviet Union was Avgust 1914 (1971; August 1914), a historical novel treating Germany's crushing victory over Russia in their initial military engagement of World War I, the Battle of Tannenburg. The novel centred on several characters in the doomed 1st Army of the Russian general A.V. Samsonov and indirectly explored the weaknesses of the tsarist regime that eventually led to its downfall by revolution in 1917.

In December 1973 the first parts of Arkhipelag Gulag (The Gulag Archipelago) were published in Paris after a copy of the manuscript had been seized in the Soviet Union by the KGB. (Gulag is an acronym formed from the official Soviet designation of its system of prisons and labour camps.) The Gulag Archipelago is Solzhenitsyn's attempt to compile a literary-historical record of the vast system of prisons and labour camps that came into being shortly after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia (1917) and that underwent an enormous expansion during the rule of Stalin (1924-53). Various sections of the work describe the arrest, interrogation, conviction, transportation, and imprisonment of the Gulag's victims as practiced by Soviet authorities over four decades. The work mingles historical exposition and Solzhenitsyn's own autobiographical accounts with the voluminous personal testimony of other inmates that he collected and committed to memory during his imprisonment.

Upon publication of the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn was immediately attacked in the Soviet press. Despite the intense interest in his fate that was shown in the West, he was arrested and charged with treason on Feb. 12, 1974. Solzhenitsyn was exiled from the Soviet Union on the following day, and in December he took possession of his Nobel Prize.

In 1975 a documentary novel, Lenin v Tsyurikhe: glavy (Lenin in Zurich: Chapters), appeared. Subsequently, Solzhenitsyn traveled to the United States, where he eventually settled on a secluded estate in Cavendish, Vt. The second and third volumes of The Gulag Archipelago were published in 1974-75. Solzhenitsyn produced two books of nonfiction in 1980: The Oak and the Calf, which portrayed literary life in the Soviet Union, and the brief The Mortal Danger, which analyzed what he perceived to be the perils of American misconceptions about Russia. In 1983 an extensively expanded and revised version of August 1914 appeared in Russian as the first part of a projected series, Krasnoe koleso (The Red Wheel); other volumes (or uzly ["knots"]) in the series were Oktyabr 1916 ("October 1916"), Mart 1917 ("March 1917"), and Aprel 1917 ("April 1917").

In presenting alternatives to the Soviet regime, Solzhenitsyn tended to reject Western emphases on democracy and individual freedom and instead favoured the formation of a benevolent authoritarian regime that would draw upon the resources of Russia's traditional Christian values. The introduction of glasnost ("openness") in the late 1980s brought renewed access to Solzhenitsyn's work in the Soviet Union. In 1989 the Soviet literary magazine Novy Mir published the first officially approved excerpts from The Gulag Archipelago. Other works were also published, and Solzhenitsyn's Soviet citizenship was officially restored in 1990. He ended his exile and returned to Russia in 1994.

Copyright (c) 1995 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn Autobiography

I was born at Kislovodsk on 11th December, 1918. My father had studied philological subjects at Moscow University, but did not complete his studies, as he enlisted as a volunteer when war broke out in 1914. He became an artillery officer on the German front, fought throughout the war and died in the summer of 1918, six months before I was born. I was brought up by my mother, who worked as a shorthand-typist, in the town of Rostov on the Don, where I spent the whole of my childhood and youth, leaving the grammar school there in 1936. Even as a child, without any prompting from others, I wanted to be a writer and, indeed, I turned out a good deal of the usual juvenilia. In the 1930s, I tried to get my writings published but I could not find anyone willing to accept my manuscripts. I wanted to acquire a literary education, but in Rostov such an education that would suit my wishes was not to be obtained. To move to Moscow was not possible, partly because my mother was alone and in poor health, and partly because of our modest circumstances. I therefore began to study at the Department of Mathematics at Rostov University, where it proved that I had considerable aptitude for mathematics. But although I found it easy to learn this subject, I did not feel that I wished to devote my whole life to it. Nevertheless, it was to play a beneficial role in my destiny later on, and on at least two occasions, it rescued me from death. For I would probably not have survived the eight years in camps if I had not, as a mathematician, been transferred to a so-called sharashia, where I spent four years; and later, during my exile, I was allowed to teach mathematics and physics, which helped to ease my existence and made it possible for me to write. If I had had a literary education it is quite likely that I should not have survived these ordeals but would instead have been subjected to even greater pressures. Later on, it is true, I began to get some literary education as well; this was from 1939 to 1941, during which time, along with university studies in physics and mathematics, I also studied by correspondence at the Institute of History, Philosophy and Literature in Moscow.
             In 1941, a few days before the outbreak of the war, I graduated from the Department of Physics and Mathematics at Rostov University. At the beginning of the war, owing to weak health, I was detailed to serve as a driver of horsedrawn vehicles during the winter of 1941-1942. Later, because of my mathematical knowledge, I was transferred to an artillery school, from which, after a crash course, I passed out in November 1942. Immediately after this I was put in command of an artillery-position-finding company, and in this capacity, served, without a break, right in the front line until I was arrested in February 1945. This happened in East Prussia, a region which is linked with my destiny in a remarkable way. As early as 1937, as a first-year student, I chose to write a descriptive essay on "The Samsonov Disaster" of 1914 in East Prussia and studied material on this; and in 1945 I myself went to this area (at the time of writing, autumn 1970, the book August 1914 has just been completed).
           I was arrested on the grounds of what the censorship had found during the years 1944-45 in my correspondence with a school friend, mainly because of certain disrespectful remarks about Stalin, although we referred to him in disguised terms. As a further basis for the "charge", there were used the drafts of stories and reflections which had been found in my map case. These, however, were not sufficient for a "prosecution", and in July 1945 I was "sentenced" in my absence, in accordance with a procedure then frequently applied, after a resolution by the OSO (the Special Committee of the NKVD), to eight years in a detention camp (at that time this was considered a mild sentence).
            I served the first part of my sentence in several correctional work camps of mixed types (this kind of camp is described in the play, The Tenderfoot and the Tramp). In 1946, as a mathematician, I was transferred to the group of scientific research institutes of the MVD-MOB (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of State Security). I spent the middle period of my sentence in such "SPECIAL PRISONS" (The First Circle). In 1950 I was sent to the newly established "Special Camps" which were intended only for political prisoners. In such a camp in the town of Ekibastuz in Kazakhstan (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich), I worked as a miner, a bricklayer, and a foundryman. There I contracted a tumour which was operated on, but the condition was not cured (its character was not established until later on).
           One month after I had served the full term of my eight-year sentence, there came, without any new judgement and even without a "resolution from the OSO", an administrative decision to the effect that I was not to be released but EXILED FOR LIFE to Kok-Terek (southern Kazakhstan). This measure was not directed specially against me, but was a very usual procedure at that time. I served this exile from March 1953 (on March 5th, when Stalin's death was made public, I was allowed for the first time to go out without an escort) until June 1956. Here my cancer had developed rapidly, and at the end of 1953, I was very near death. I was unable to eat, I could not sleep and was severely affected by the poisons from the tumour. However, I was able to go to a cancer clinic at Tashkent, where, during 1954, I was cured (The Cancer Ward, Right Hand). During all the years of exile, I taught mathematics and physics in a primary school and during my hard and lonely existence I wrote prose in secret (in the camp I could only write down poetry from memory). I managed, however, to keep what I had written, and to take it with me to the European part of the country, where, in the same way, I continued, as far as the outer world was concerned, to occupy myself with teaching and, in secret, to devote myself to writing, at first in the Vladimir district (Matryona's Farm) and afterwards in Ryazan.
          During all the years until 1961, not only was I convinced that I should never see a single line of mine in print in my lifetime, but, also, I scarcely dared allow any of my close acquaintances to read anything I had written because I feared that this would become known. Finally, at the age of 42, this secret authorship began to wear me down. The most difficult thing of all to bear was that I could not get my works judged by people with literary training. In 1961, after the 22nd Congress of the U.S.S.R. Communist Party and Tvardovsky's speech at this, I decided to emerge and to offer One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
           Such an emergence seemed, then, to me, and not without reason, to be very risky because it might lead to the loss of my manuscripts, and to my own destruction. But, on that occasion, things turned out successfully, and after protracted efforts, A.T. Tvardovsky was able to print my novel one year later. The printing of my work was, however, stopped almost immediately and the authorities stopped both my plays and (in 1964) the novel, The First Circle, which, in 1965, was seized together with my papers from the past years. During these months it seemed to me that I had committed an unpardonable mistake by revealing my work prematurely and that because of this I should not be able to carry it to a conclusion.
           It is almost always impossible to evaluate at the time events which you have already experienced, and to understand their meaning with the guidance of their effects. All the more unpredictable and surprising to us will be the course of future events.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1968-1980, Editor-in-Charge Tore Frängsmyr, Editor Sture Allén, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1993

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn died on 3 August, 2008.

_____________________________________________________________________________

"Alexandr Solzhenitsyn - Autobiography". Nobelprize.org. 20 Jul 2010

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1970/solzhenitsyn-autobio.html

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Essay Topics and Critical Commentary * Essay Topics

Identify the most significant symbol in the novel and justify your choice.

State one possible theme of the novel, and support your position.

Give your opinion on why One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch is considered an important novel in the canon of world literature, and why it was seminal in the nomination of Solzhenitsyn as a Nobel Prize winner.

Describe how the setting complements the primary themes of the novel.

Describe the Solzhenitsyn hero.

Compare and Contrast One Day with another novel you've read in this class.

Instructor's Recommendation: I would like to see an essay on setting, and how it is crucial to the story. How does Solzhenitsyn describe the setting? What are the elements of the setting that contribute to the novel? Are there elements of the setting that are odd, or don't really fit the novel, such as the sick room--a place that exists to give care. This is an odd segment of setting in a prisoner camp, yet Solzhenitsyn manages to integrate the sick room into the same type of despairing, hopeless, sterile setting as other parts of the camp. Comment on how he does this.

Critical Commentary*

Introduction And Background

"For the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions

of Russian literature." - From the Nobel Prize Citation for Alexander

Solzhenitsyn, October 8, 1970.

In mid-century - 1962 to be exact - a bright new talent appeared with stunning suddenness on the literary horizon. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, together with his epoch-making work, One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, flared up like a supernova in the Eastern skies and incandesced the Western skies as well. Today Solzhenitsyn remains the most impressive figure in world literature of the latter half of the 20th century.

Before One Day was throttled in the USSR, it had become an overnight sensation. The 100,000 copies of Novy Mir (New World) carrying the novella sold out in November 1962 in a matter of hours; so did the almost 1 million copies of immediate second and third printings. But by 1963, not only Solzhenitsyn, who had earlier been a protégé of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, but Khrushchev himself fell under a cloud as a new wave of political and cultural Reactionism again loomed in the Soviet Union. By the end of 1964, the editor of Novy Mir (Tvardovsky), Khrushchev, Solzhenitsyn, and a number of other liberal elements or influences in Soviet culture became the targets of a widening campaign to restore Stalinist orthodoxy and a rigid party line to the arts.

Nineteen sixty-two, debut year for One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich and its author, was an important episode in the most unusual, if brief, epoch in recent Soviet history. This was the time-1961-1962-of crisscrossing, incongruous developments, both in domestic as well as foreign policy.

Condemnation Of Stalinism

On the Soviet home scene, the De-Stalinization Campaign reached a crescendo. Stalin's embalmed body, which lay next to Lenin's, was abruptly removed from the Lenin Mausoleum on the party's orders and reinterred in a humble plot at the foot of the Kremlin Wall. This action became a potent symbol of the widening condemnation of Stalin's draconic policies with respect to other party comrades, the arts, and the population at large. In the arts, the liberals now sought to make new inroads, to come out of the closet and with them, their manuscripts out of desk drawers. This process was illustrated by the liberal poets Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky, and other writers acquiring new posts in writers' unions and on editorial boards of journals. "The younger generation of Russians," Yevtushenko announced confidently during a lecture tour to England in May 1962, "are increasingly beginning to feel themselves masters in their own country." The liberal journal Yunost' (Youth) published Vasily Aksenov's trailblazing story A Ticket to the Stars while a heterodoxical work also published in Yunost's pages (each issue of which sold like hot pirozhkis) was that a youthful rebellion of sorts was underway in the USSR, that younger people were becoming outspokenly critical of the values and policies identified with the older, Stalinist generation.

Such heretical works and attitudes by no means were left unchallenged by the conservatives and hardliners attached to the regime. In fact, 1962 and 1963 represented the beginnings of an effort, culminating in the mid-1970s, to clamp down on the liberal tendencies that were in such evidence during these years and upon whose crests Solzhenitsyn and One Day rode to prominence. One of the signs that a crackdown was imminent was barely concealed (by Aesopian language) in Yevtushenko's sensational poem published during the Cuban Missile Crisis week in October 1962 entitled, "The Heirs of Stalin." In this short but trenchant political poem (which, incidentally, was printed in the party daily Pravda, edited at the time by Khrushchev allies), Yevtushenko warned against the possible recrudescence of Stalinism in his country. "A telephone line is installed [in Stalin's coffin]," he wrote. "Stalin has not given up," his "telephone line" runs all the way to Communist reactionaries in Tirana (Albania), Peking, and to the Kremlin. The poem concludes: "As long as Stalin's heirs exist on earth/It will seem to me/That Stalin is still in the Mausoleum."

Yevtushenko's warning of a political rollback began to take on concrete meaning at the end of 1962, after publication of One Day, and especially in the spring of 1963. First came the Cuban Missile Crisis, or what came to be called for the Soviets the "Cuban fiasco." Soviet merchantmen bound for Havana with lethal missiles lashed to their decks were turned back in humiliating U-shaped wakes-a retreat forced on the Russians by a U.S. naval blockade ordered from the White House by President John F. Kennedy. Kremlin watchers immediately detected slippage in Khrushchev's standing in the Moscow leadership; Soviet loss-of-face became obvious to hundreds of millions of newspaper readers throughout the world.

The second straw-that-broke-Nikita's-back was the embarrassing exposure found in the notorious Penkovsky Papers. Col. Oleg Penkovsky had been a deputy chief of a department in the hush-hush State Committee for Coordinating Scientific Research and probably, too, a member of Soviet military intelligence. In October 1962 he was arrested in Moscow for having acted as a double agent, for the USSR but also for both the U.S. and U.K. intelligence services. Needless to say, he was executed, in somewhere like the basement of Lubyanka prison, but not without leaving behind in the West his papers, which then became available to Western media. The Penkovsky Papers told a story of slack discipline among Soviet intelligence agents (not to mention the treason of Penkovsky himself), revealed the names of secret agents and their means of conducting espionage in the West, and seemed to illustrate a general laxity which, to the conservatives, had been brought on by Khrushchev-endorsed policies of liberalization.

Third, there was the poor showing of the Soviet economy, according to the fourth-quarter 1962 economic report; the crucial sector of agriculture was especially shortfallen.

Encouraged by these and other turns of events as the year 1963 opened, the Kremlin hardliners, joined by the culture hawks, were loaded for bear. Khrushchev, his liberal-minded son-in-law (Adzhubei), and a whole flock of liberal-lining authors and critics came under the sights of the reactionaries. The list of dramatis personae in this unfolding drama to unseat the First Secretary and to turn back the clock on the Soviet cultural scene is too long to recount here; in any case, it is the results that speak just as loud as the step-by-step causal chain which brought them about.

Solzhenitsyn Attacked

The blips of reaction were clearly manifest at the turn of the year 1962. The Soviet super-patriotic, party-lining author and critic, Nikolai Gribachev, aimed a stinging attack against Yevtushenko in the pages of Pravda in January 1963. Ilya Ehrenburg, one of the more respected of old generation liberals, author of the pace-setting novel of 1953, ironically titled The Thaw, was raked over the coals in the government daily Izvestiya. In these and other party-initiated criticisms, the message was that the cultural expression of de-Stalinization must be halted. Moreover, there was the implication that de-Stalinization as a whole, not only in the arts, should be discontinued, liberal journals - Yunost' and Novy Mir particularly - came under sharp attack. One Lydia Fomenko attacked both Solzhenitsyn and the magazine that had carried One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (for showing a lack of "philosophical perspective"); socialism, she wrote, was built in the Soviet Union, and along with it the various Stalinist institutions, quite aside from and despite the fact of Stalin's "personal short-comings" (!). It was profoundly mistaken, she maintained, to identify socialism with Stalin, as Solzhenitsyn had done implicitly in One Day.

Nikita Khrushchev himself felt obliged to join the swelling chorus of straight-laced neo-Stalinists on the cultural front. Whether he was under duress or not, the First Secretary took out after Ehrenburg and Yevtushenko, and Viktor Nekrasov, all of whose modest literary heresies he had apparently once tolerated, perhaps even encouraged, to further his own political ends. Now Khrushchev talked the language of the conservatives: "Our Soviet youth," the Leader reminded his audience at a special Kremlin conference of 600 writers, artists, and intellectuals in March 1963, "has been brought up by our party; it follows our party; and it sees in it its educator and leader." Harangued on the rostrum by the party apparatchik Leonid Ilyichev and other spokesmen for a hard line on the arts, this conference heard one orthodox-minded speaker after another defend the older generation against the younger, while at the same time each denied that any "fathers-and-sons" confrontation or minor generation gap could possibly exist under Soviet conditions. Some, including Khrushchev, held up the example of the author Mikhail Sholokhov, famous for his great novel Quiet Flows the Don (but some, Solzhenitsyn for one, question the authenticity of his authorship of the work) but for precious little else. They pitted this author against the other of his generation, Ehrenburg, in a subtle but nonetheless obvious display of anti-Semitism to prove that the one (Sholokhov) was a genuine revolutionist and Communist while the other (Ehrenburg) was a sham, a coward, even a "silent" collaborator in the foul deeds of Stalin.

The next step - and this, too, was crucial for the careers of One Day and its author - was the start of a gradual but steady Rehabilitation Of Stalin. Just as Khrushchev had used the de-Stalinization campaign to embarrass the old Stalinist rivals in his leadership, even to purge some of them as he did in 1957, likewise and anti-Khrushchev forces pushed for Stalin's rehabilitation precisely for the purpose of sandbagging the First Secretary. Some of the most denunciatory of anti-Stalin spokesmen of the recent past (Leonid Brezhnev among them) one-by-one joined the anti-Khrushchev alliance. This was the group of conservatives, a virtual crypto-cabinet, who not only opposed any continuance or broadening of the anti-Stalin campaign, but who also wished to overturn a number of Khrushchev domestic and foreign policies. The grounds were that these policies were ill-advised, too liberal, or too "hare-brained," as the Central Committee's indictment against Khrushchev put it in October 1964 - that is when the First Secretary was finally replaced by a team of neo-Stalinists headed by Brezhnev, Alexei Kosygin, and Mikhail Suslov.

For One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, 1963-1964 was a turning point. In fact, the pressure to rehabilitate Stalin and contain de-Stalinization had an obvious connection with the nomination of One Day - and for its failure to win - the Lenin Prize. During the autumn of 1963 and into 1964, literati in Russia discussed the possibility of Solzhenitsyn's receiving the prize for 1964. The Communist youth daily, Komsomolskaya Pravda, went so far as to publish a letter to the editor by a reader who recommended that One Day get the Lenin Prize for literature. (Several works are customarily nominated for the prize, the final decision being made by an "illustrious" body of judges who are under strong pressure from the party.) The same newspaper, answering as it were the reader's letter, criticized the behavior of the novella's main character, the prisoner, Ivan Shukhov, for being "distasteful." Another Solzhenitsyn writing which figured in the pre-prize discussion was Matryona's Place, a story published in Novy Mir shortly after One Day. In the discussion, the "pros" seemed outnumbered, at least by their connections, by the "cons" on the matter of whether Solzhenitsyn should receive the prize. Finally, in February 1964 a joint meeting of the secretariats (which are customarily saturated with partiytsi [party-liners]) of the RSFSR and Moscow writers' organizations determined that One Day "cannot be placed among the outstanding works which are worthy of the Lenin Prize." A bitterly ironic remark began to circulate around Moscow after this, to many people, shocking rejection of One Day: "Tell me what you think of One Day and I will proceed to tell you just who you are."

True Literature?

Solzhenitsyn's turning to history has extremely important consequences for his total literary heritage. As he himself has said, "Literature that is not the very breath of contemporary society does not deserve the name of literature." To be true literature, "the pain and fears of society must be held before it, society must be warned against the moral and social dangers which threaten it."

History to Solzhenitsyn, as to Leo Tolstoy, is the theater and the arena in which the abominations as well as the glories of human behavior are revealed at their most powerful and on the grandest scale. This is not to say that Solzhenitsyn actually "writes history," meaning by that a formal history text. Rather, his novel August 1914 is a vehicle for the telling the larger story of the human condition. As in One Day, characters are minutely inspected in order best to understand the historical environment in which they participate as well as being affected by it. In other words, history at its present juncture provides Solzhenitsyn with concrete, "living" referents or the actual background against which the moral fiber of realistically depicted characters are not only revealed but above all tested and tempered. As in the later work, Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn's historical novel about Leninist-Stalinist terror and the labor-camp system, so in August 1914 events do not simply "happen," as though they were products of the action of Fate. It is precisely over the issue of Why Events Happen that Solzhenitsyn parts company with the great Russian writer, Tolstoy, who himself used history (War and Peace) as a means of dissecting the human spirit and human character.

For Solzhenitsyn, the tragedies of individual men and women-say, as found in forced labor camps-are not decreed by Fate or by heaven. These individual tragedies are seen as parts, packets, or "knots" (uzly, Solzhenitsyn's term) of a larger Tragedy, capital T. People are often seen as victims of institutionalized distortions of humanity-whether such institutions be Lenin's revolutionary tribunals, Leninist-Stalinist censorship, or the Gulag Archipelago. But note that the institutions themselves which debase the victims are not the inexorable result of "historical necessity." Such institutions are not only avoidable, but the author strongly implies, eradicable, even though they have become deeply entrenched as, for example, in Soviet society.

Not that Solzhenitsyn is a "revolutionary," in the usual sense of that word. Indeed, he could never dedicate himself to revolution, implying as it does the unleashing of violence and of "vranyo" (Russian for deceitful ballyhoo and propaganda), of paying servile homage to cults, either of leaders, ideologies, or of the State and the Party. Such particular "Causes" or "The Cause" frequently disappoint and disillusion their followers (as happened on a small scale as described by John Simon Kunen in The Strawberry Statement, for example), despite their pious-sounding goals and alleged "self-transcending devotion."

Solzhenitsyn is tuned in on a more distant, yet more proximate drummer, his Muse. As an artist, his metier is the calling up of vivid images, even when he is retelling the history of twentieth-century Russia. At all times it is the stark, unadorned reality of the world, and of the people living in it, which interest Solzhenitsyn. But as he tells of the results of the foregoing events, of the decisions and personalities (including Tsar Nicholas I, his ministers and generals, Lenin, Stalin, et al.) participating in history, Solzhenitsyn also seeks out the causes (causation) which have brought about the historical consequences. Most of the major actions occurring in history, as Solzhenitsyn views it, are due to conscious human initiation motivated by consciously defined purposes.

In short, Solzhenitsyn's Sense Of Tragedy is distinctly non-classical as well as non-Tolstoyan. Heroic characters are not "tragically-flawed" or innocent victims of unconscious or unknowable forces or enigmas. Solzhenitsyn's is faintly Manichaean viewpoint, in which the world and the historical terrain are populated with persons-whether at the grassroots or at the very summit of power-who appear to be intrinsically, almost genetically, either evil or on the other hand, good. For Solzhenitsyn, there are demonic natures and humanitarian natures. To him, the evil-doers may outnumber the benefactors of mankind, at least in contemporary political and social life, but they do not ultimately defeat them. This view is not only non-classical, it is also non-nineteenth century. In the preceding century, more times than not, history was viewed, whether by trained historians or by the writers of fiction and philosophy, as a "process." It could be studied "scientifically" as though it were an environment resembling the Galapagos Islands where Darwin studied natural processes. Indeed, to the nineteenth-century historian, history was often viewed as a law-bound evolution. Terms such as "process," "historicism," "determinism," "impersonal forces," "inevitability," etc., were employed to give scientific-better, scientistic-credence to the telling of history. In What is History? Edward Hallett Carr has called this tendency in historiography a misunderstanding of the nature of science (whether natural science or social science), the failure to appreciate that historians advance "progressively from one fragmentary hypothesis to another," not by means of dogmatic insistence upon "historical law" and "ultimate truth."

So, for Solzhenitsyn, man's Tragedy does not consist in his being ground under by an historical juggernaut, a dumb force guided by inexorable historical laws, impersonal forces, economic determinism, and so forth. Instead, man makes his own history. Ideologies, religions, policies do help shape the lines along which history will be made, but above all for Solzhenitsyn, it is men who make history. It is they who can be blamed. So can the makers of ideologies be blamed for the postulates they develop and the consequences which result from them. "Who is to blame?" the author of Gulag Archipelago asks in the chapter entitled, "The Law Becomes a Man." He answers, with bitter irony: "Well, of course, it obviously could never be the Over-All Leadership!"

Literary Techniques

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's style of writing is economical and unornamental. This is particularly true of One Day. This would seemingly cause little difficulty in translating One Day were it not for the great amount of prison jargon contained in the dialogues and discussion of life in the camp.

The author's motto might well be, "wie es eigentlich gewesen," or "tell it like it is." In believing as he does in honest realism and not the propaganda slogan of "socialist realism," Solzhenitsyn wishes to render the real-life situations he describes in so many of his writings-but especially in One Day-in real-life language. The author did not have to use any glossaries of prison argot, although the translator must; Solzhenitsyn simply drew on his own 8-years' experience in corrective labor camps.

Artistic Use Of Blunt Language

Many "unprintable" Russian words turn up in One Day, as it was first published in Novy Mir. Words like khub kren, yebat', govno and der'mo, khui, pizda, etc., would make Beelzebub himself blush, but since they are part of a zek's vocabulary, they appear in the novella. In the half-dozen extant English translations of the work, these words are rendered with the frankness of a Henry Miller novel. In Solzhenitsyn's case, the reader gets the impression that far from wishing to be shocking or sensational, the author has used these obscenities to show how debased humans can become. In any case, most of the smutty language comes out of the mouths of the camp authorities. This undoubtedly is the author's way of illustrating the source of the debasement, debasement not only of language but of human beings.

In a brilliantly written essay, L. Rzhevsky notes how the blunt language lends an "immediacy and sincerity of tone" to the story (in Tvorets i Podvig: Ocherki po Tvorchestvu Aleksandra Solzhenitsyna [The Artist and His Accomplishments: Notes on the Writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn], Possev-Verlag, Frankfurt/Main). "The simplicity and credibility of the story" are enhanced by this device, whether the scene be in the barracks, at the construction site, or during the friskings and body counts. Professor Christopher Moody speaks in his book (see Bibliography) of the author's own familiarity with Russian peasant life; he has learned how to convey the "idiom of the common people." Solzhenitsyn studied philological texts (such as Dal's famous dictionary) to verify expressions that he heard, and he took copious notes, as Dostoyevsky had done before him, as found in Dostoyevsky's Diary of a Writer. Some of Solzhenitsyn's proverbs appear to be lifted from Dal. Moody cites and proverb found in One Day, "How can you expect a man who is warm to understand a man who is cold" (from the infirmary scene where Shukhov is commenting about Kolya upon leaving the hospital). But the Dal original renders it, "A man who is satisfied cannot understand one who is hungry." So in these and other cases, Solzhenitsyn did not reproduce Dal but only adapted Dal to his own purposes. Moody notes also Solzhenitsyn's folk-tale (skaz) flavor. He cites the "stitch-stitch-stitch" line when Shukhov is sewing into his mattress the remaining half of a piece of bread; one might also mention the top-top, skrip-skrip onomatopoeia, which is Russian folk speech.

Moody also notes how Solzhenitsyn's descriptions do not retard the pace of One Day. The story's tempo is not slowed down, "nor does the rhythm become monotonous." The wealth of detail is combined with the lively pace of narration in which broken phrases, a wealth of emotionally-colored interrogatory and exclamatory figures, expressive parenthetical words and phrases, ellipses and unusual word order are used to best advantage.

"Skaz" Story-Telling

As to the folk-tale manner of One Day, Professor Moody and others note how Solzhenitsyn fits into the Russian tradition of Pilniak, Zamyatin, and Babel, not to mention prerevolutionary writers like Leskov and Gogol. In the skaz, the story-teller, or narrator, is one the same level as the main characters in the story. He think their thoughts and uses their language. The skaz strategy for telling the story permits the author to tailor in a great deal of "local color," to lend the story an eye-witness flavor through the making of astute, sometimes humorous and sardonic observations or commentaries. The narration in One Day permits the reader along with the author vicariously to dart in and out of the situations or conversations, as if he were there, both participating as well as describing goings-on. One Day's narration is enhanced by the fact that the language is at times simple and slangy and full of zek argot. The "darting-in-and-out" technique is accomplished by Solzhenitsyn without establishing any clear dividing line between Shukhov's speaking and the author's speaking. Moody notes that the voices "interchange so imperceptibly that the reader is often uncertain which is speaking." At times it will necessitate extreme care on the part of the reader to disentangle an unspoken monologue of Shukhov from an exterior observation made by the author through the unseen narrator, who is in the third person.

Moreover, the Shukhov himself is speaking, in a dialogue for example, it is sometimes difficult to know whether he is speaking to us, the readers, or to another character in the dialogue. At this juncture, the author, via the narrator, may step in to wrap up a scene with a comment or observation.

In brief, the author has employed a number of techniques to achieve his overall strategy in One Day. Above all, he wants to tell us the truth in the manner in which we are generally acquainted with raw truth: as a blunt, lopsided thing which we have no other choice but to accept. Avoiding as he does rnamentation or lengthy sentences and description (in the Dickensian or Dostoyevskian manner), Solzhenitsyn accomplishes a stoic austerity which somehow suits the equally stark scenes, lean figures, and cleanshaven heads of the zeks etched against the bleak white background of the Siberian camp.

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Schelle, David, ed. "Name of specific page here." Nobel Novelists Online. Delta County Schools, 1998

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The Circle of Souls in John Donne's
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

by Cynthia A. Cavanaugh

At the beginning of "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning," the poet, John Donne, engages in a didactic lesson to show the parallel between a positive way to meet death and a positive way to separate from a lover. When a virtuous man dies, he whispers for his soul to go while others await his parting. Such a man sets an example for lovers. The separation of the soul from the body, and the separation of lovers from each other, is not an ending but the beginning of a new cycle. The poem ends with the image of a circle, the symbol of perfection (Hall's 69, 297), representing the union of souls in a love relationship. This perfection is attained by parting at the beginning of the circle and reuniting at the point where the curves reconnect.
According to Helen Gardner, the metaphysical poem takes the reader down a certain path, a fixed line of argumentation (17). This valediction, an act of bidding farewell, proceeds in the guise of a monologue in which a speaker attempts to persuade a lover to remain faithful during his absence. The monologue is dramatic in the sense that the stay-behind lover is the implied listener. Donne's monologue is unique because he uses metaphysical comparisons to show the union of the lovers during their period of separation.
Although the poem attempts to persuade the lover as an implied listener, it also speaks indirectly to the reader who is drawn into the argument. The speaker's argument is supported by an implied reference to the authority of Greek philosophers and astronomers. According to Patricia Pinka, this use of esteemed authority to justify a view about love is a common unifying element throughout many of Donne's Songs and Sonnets (50).
It is probable that Donne wrote this poem for his wife, Ann Donne, and gave it to her before leaving to go abroad in 1611. Ann, sick and pregnant at the time, protested being left behind as her husband began a European tour with his friend, Sir Robert Drury (Parker 56).
The poem begins with a metaphysical comparison between virtuous dying men whispering to their souls to leave their bodies and two lovers saying goodbye before a journey. The poet says, "Let us melt and make no noise.... 'Twere profanation of our joys/ To tell the laity of our love" (ll. 5-8). The word "melt" implies a change in physical state. The bond of the lovers will dissolve quietly like the soul of a dying man separating from his body. "Noise" refers to "tear floods" and "sigh tempests" that the speaker implores his love not to release (l. 6).
He continues by comparing natural phenomena to a love relationship, the "sigh tempests" relating to the element of air, and the "tear floods" to the element of water. He uses this hyperbole to demand that his lover remain stoic and resist any show of emotion upon his departure (ll. 4-8).
Next, the element of earth is introduced. Earthquakes are perceived by everyone, and people often interpret them as omens of misfortune. It is understandable that an earthquake would be looked upon with fear because of its potential to ravage the land; wheras a trepidation affecting a celestial sphere would be viewed in a different light, especially one that is imperceptible and has no apparent meaning for the average person (Donne 444: 159 l. 11). ¹
In order to understand the meaning of the third quatrain in the poem, it is necessary to consider the Ptolemaic Universe and the symbolism of the sphere. During the Middle Ages and the Elizabethan Age, the circle and sphere were looked upon as perfect shapes. The main influence behind that thinking may have been Greek philosophers such as Aristotle, who believed that since, "The motion of the celestial bodies is not straight and finite, but circular, invariable and eternal. So they themselves must be eternal, unalterable, divine" (Pannekoek 115).
The well-educated Donne, 1572-1631, certainly studied famous Greek thinkers such as Aristotle and Ptolemy, and their views concerning the universe. Donne lived during a time when many people accepted the Ptolemaic theory of the universe, which held that the spherical planets orbited the earth in concentric circles called deferents. ² Writing this poem in 1611, Donne would most likely be influenced by his previous classical studies, and he chose to use the circle and the sphere to represent a perfect relationship based on reason and harmony.
The "trepidation of the spheres" is another obsolete astronomical theory, used to support the speaker's point that great changes in the heavens may be imperceptible to the layman. (ll.11-12). The speaker presents this comparison between the earthquake and the "trepidation of the spheres" to suggest that matters beyond one's control should be approached rationally.
In quatrains four and five, the speaker urges his love to remain stoic by making any change in their relationship as imperceptible to others as the "trepidation of the spheres," and again, he uses terms from astronomy to illustrate his point. The term "sublunary" refers to the surface below the moon. According to the Greek astronomers, this sublunar area, composed of the four elements, was imperfect. The sphere's surface, composed of quinta essenta, the perfect part, radiates light and heat (Pannekoek 115).
The dull sublunary lovers (l. 13) are imperfect human beings who do not practice mature love. The soul of their love is "sense" (l. 14), so they need physical contact to cement their relationship. However, the speaker suggests that reason can free itself from any connection with a sensory experience. Therefore, the lovers with fully developed souls "Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss" (l. 20), having developed rational souls, the third part of the Aristotelian model for the human soul, consisting of vegetative, sense and rational parts. (Copleston, 328).
In quatrain six, Donne echoes the traditional marriage ceremony in which two become one, so the "two souls" of the lovers are joined together. He describes separation as a stretching exercise in which the joined soul of the lovers is gold beat to an "airy thinness" (l. 24). According to Pinka, the comparison is "beautiful and pure" but "fragile" since there is "expansion without increase" (142). The "airy thinness" emphasizes the stretching of the lovers' resources, in that the love continues to exist, but its strength is weakened by the circumstances. He urges the lover to look at the separation in a positive light, but he sends out undertones suggesting that he is aware of the fragility of the situation.³
The speaker then begins his closing argument, in which he changes his symbol of perfection from the sphere to the circle. One might argue that the circle and the sphere are slightly different objects and should not be considered one and the same; however, the Ptolemaic Universe consisted of both perfect spheres and perfect circular orbits, and so the concept of circle and sphere both represented perfection. Poets and songwriters have often used sphere and circle symbolism. One such work, The Divine Comedy, written in three books: the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso by Dante Alighieri, still remains well-known today.
In Dante Alighieri's Paradiso, a story of a pilgrim journeying through Paradise, Dante sees nine concentric circles in the eyes of Beatrice, his guide. Beatrice explains to him that each of nine circles represents an angelic order. The brightest circles are in the center nearest to God and represent the highest order of angels and the greatest good. According to Beatrice, each circle also corresponds to one of the nine spherical heavens consisting of the five planets, the sun, the moon, the fixed stars, and the Prime Mover.⁴
It does not seem unusual for Donne to include both the sphere and the circle in his poetry as symbols of perfection, since other writers had linked the circle and the sphere together in various ways throughout the history of science and literature.
The speaker in the poem is unique in that he does not compare the perfection of his love to a traditional object such as a rock or a fortress; instead he chooses to compare the twin legs of a compass to the lovers' sense of union during absence (ll. 25-36). Such a comparison would be called metaphysical according to Gardner, who states that a metaphysical conceit must concern two things so dissimilar that we "feel an incongruity" (19). Here, the poet must then proceed to persuade the reader that these things are alike in spite of their apparent differences (19-22).
The speaker proves the point by drawing the circle with the compass. The lover who stays behind is the fixed point, and the speaker is the other leg of the instrument. Without the "firmness" of the fixed point, he would be unable to complete the journey and make the circle just (precise). The adverb "obliquely" (l. 34) may have several different meanings. John Freccero supports the interpretation that obliquely means a spiral motion, referred to by the Neoplatonic tradition as a movement of the soul (286-87). Obliquely may also indicate a slant. Either the drawing instrument can be interpreted to move in a spiral, or the motion may refer to the second foot's tilted position in relation to the fixed one in the center. Such a position would be required during the drawing of a circle.
According to Freccero, "No matter how far Donne roams his thoughts will revolve around his love.... At the end of the circle, body and soul are one" (283). In Donne's "Valediction," the human souls are described in the context of a joint soul that is stretched by the separation, or two souls joined within a circle of spiritual strength. Donne once stated in an elegy, "...perfect motions are all circular."⁵ The circle in the "Valediction" represents the journey during which two lovers endure the trial of separation, as they support each other spiritually, and eventually merge in a physically and spiritually perfect union.

Works Cited

Alighieri, Dante. "Paradiso." The Divine Comedy. vol. 3.
Charles Norton, Trans.
Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1902.
"Circle." Hall's Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art. 1979 ed.
Copleston, Frederick. A History of Philosophy. Vol 1.
New York: Doubleday, 1993.
Donne, John. "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning."
John Donne. Frank Kermode, Ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Freccero, John. "Donne's "Valediction Forbidding Mourning."
Essential Articles: John Donne's Poetry. Roberts, John, Ed.
Hamden, Connecticut: Archon, 1975. 279-304.
Gardner, Helen. "Introduction." The Metaphysical Poets.
Helen Gardner, Ed.
London: Penguin Group, 1985.
Pannekoek, A. A History Of Astronomy.
London: Ruskin House, 1961.
Parker, Derek. John Donne and his world.
London: Thames, 1975.
Pinka, Patricia. This Dialogue of One: The Songs and Sonnets of John Donne.
Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 1982.
Spaulding, Nancy and Samuel Namowity. Heath Earth Science.
Evanston, Illinois: McDougal Littell, 1994.

Cynthia A. Cavanaugh is a certified English teacher and a graduate
student (M.A. program) at Drew University in Madison, N.J.

Text copyright ©1999 Cynthia A. Cavanaugh. All Rights Reserved.
Published by Luminarium through express written permission.

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John Donne
(& his Followers)

Although he later became an Anglican and died Dean of St. Paul's, John Donne (1572-1631) was born and reared a Catholic, and his training as a Catholic in religious polemic--along with the sort of scholastic training that formed the basis of the typical Renaissance university education--helped determine the sharply analytical set of his mind.

Donne's poetry marks sharp stylistic and thematic breaks from the sort of verse written by his predecessors and indeed most of his contemporaries.

For example, while a good deal of Elizabethan poetry is flowery and decorative--at times laden with Petrarchan conceits and a song-like rhythm--Donne focused his work around highly concentrated images which often involved a dramatic contrast or are notable for their hard intellectualism. When typical Petrarchan conceits--bleeding hearts, cheeks like roses, lips like cherries--appear in Donne, they are soundly mocked. Donne liked to twist and distort not only images and ideas, but also traditional rhythmic and stanzaic patterns.

Characteristic of Donne's Poetry

Donne set what has come to be known as the pattern for metaphysical poetry [see below]. His poetry can be characterized by the following attributes:

It is sharply opposed to the
rich mellifluousness,
the sense of human dignity, and
the idealized view of sexual love
which constituted the central tradition of Elizabethan poetry, especially in writers like the Petrarchan sonneteers and Spenser.
It adopts a diction and meter modeled on the rough give-and-take of actual speech.
It is usually organized in the dramatic or rhetorical form of an urgent or heated argument (first drawing in the reader and then launching the argument).
It puts to use a subtle and often outrageous logic.
It is marked by realism, irony and often a cynicism in its treatment of the complexity of human motives.
It reveals a persistent wittiness, making use of paradox, puns, and startling parallels.

His career--actually, his life--can be viewed as having two phases:

Phase I: "Jack Donne" of Lincoln's Inn

When young and at his studies, Donne combined the gaiety and sophistication of the urban wit with the sort of heavy immersion in reading that lent his later work its intellectual strain but gave his earlier poetry a sort of jaded, witty tone.

This poetry--not published during his lifetime, but circulated in manuscript through a small circle of readers--consists of

Five satires
These satiric poems are written in deliberately rough couplets and possess a colloquial vigor and an ingenious method of argument.
Twenty elegies (some of them might not actually be Donne's, though!)
The elegies are poems mainly about love, which are written in iambic pentameter couplets and deal with their theme in a variety of ways. Some are indeed cynical: they deal with the paradoxes of lust. Some are celebratory, even of clandestine love, which they potray with an unsettling realism. Some are simply literary exercises, the work of a young poet flexing his muscles.
The Songs and Sonets
By far the most interesting of Donne's early work, the love poems in the collection Songs and Sonets are of differing moods, addressed to different persons. Some are cynical in nature; others are marked with a violence of passion. In the songs and sonnets, Donne's development is characteristic: the opening of the poems shock the reader into attention, sometimes by asking a question. Then the thought or argument is ingeniously developed in terms of ideas derived from philosophy or scientific notions (more evidence of Donne's intensive early reading!).

In these earliest poems, Donne's openings project the reader into the poem in a way that is new in English poetry for the time; once in the poem, the readers is held by a complex development of thought, which twists this way and that.

Donne's chief quality in the early work is the union of passion and ratiocination or argument.

Phase II: John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's

Although it changes in focus and theme, Donne's later poetry remains as complex and dense as his earliest endeavors. The later work reflects his religious tension and his poetic exploration of man's relationship with God.

Most but not all of Donne's Divine Poems were written during the last phase of his life, when the young and sophistiscated scholar had grown into the grave and philosophical divine. The texts tend to maintain traditional attitudes about their subjects, but they also generally incorporate a new subtlety into their study of "hard" topics and often explore controversial or tough questions about religion with startling directness.

In the best of the Divine Poems, the paradoxes of artistic production reflect with intensity the paradoxes involved in man's relation with God.

These poems were largely written after the death of Donne's wife, when he had effectively abandoned the worldly, sensuous life behind him and was searching insted for a "right relationship" with God.

The 19 Holy Sonnets contain Donne's finest examples of religious poetry. Ironically, these poems are marked by the same intensity, the same combination, of passion and argument that can be found in Songs and Sonets, although the object of the passion has now changed. Donne's later passion is more complex than that explored in his youth: it is a blend of the hope and anguish that marks the religious man's search for the right relationship with his God, when he is aware not only of God's greatness but also of his own comparative unworthiness.

Like Ben Jonson, Donne inspired his own followers, who in the eighteenth century were finally dubbed the "metaphysical poets." Donne's style and theirs is one.

Donne & the Metaphysical Poets

Eighteenth century poetic/novelist/essayist/critic Samuel Johnson coined the term ""metaphysical poets" to describe Donne and his poetic descendants when he wrote of Abraham Cowley in the Lives of the English Poets that

the metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show learning was their whole endeavor.

There was, however, no tightly organized group of poets who imitated Donne, as some had with Jonson; nevertheless, his impact on their work is evident.

As practiced by Donne and his successors, the distinguishing feature of metaphysical poetry is not just philosophical subtlety or intellectual rigor--since these elements are found in all good moral and didactic poetry--but a peculiar blend of

thought with passion,
the colloquial with the ingenious, and
realistic violence and meditative refinement.

The metaphysical poets turned to the medieval scholastic philsophers for stylistic inspiration, borrowing from them the terminology and the difficulty of their style of argument.

The Two Developments of
the Metaphysical Movement

The metaphysical movement had two distinct developments:

Secular poetry, as practiced by

Cleveland
*Marvell
Cowley

Religious poetry, as practiced by

Herbert
Vaughan
Crashaw

*Marvell is a tough one: often he is considered neither Metaphysical nor Cavalier, because his work shows evidence of both strains.

Using the term "Metaphysical Poets" to describe these very diverse writers doesn't necessarily mean they shared a common world view--only that they held in common a poetic style and a way of organizing thought.

The Metaphysical Conceit

Just as did the Petrarchan sonneteers, Donne and his followers had their own metaphysical conceits.

Samuel Johnson described their conceits as

a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. The most heterogeneous ideas are yokedby violence together.

Put more simply, a metaphysical conceit is what we would call an extended metaphor, a comparison between two relatively unlike entities.

The most famous sustained conceit is Donne's drawing of parallels between

the continuing relationship of his persona's soul with that of his beloved's (despite their physical parting) and
the coordinated movements of the two feet of a compass.

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Donne and Metaphor in A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

In his poem A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning (Valediction), John Donne relates, in verse, his insights on the human condition of love and its relationship to the soul through the conceit of drawing compasses.

Donne brings the reader a separation of body and soul in his first stanza:

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No;

This seems to say that the soul is not a part of the body, and it is only combined with the body until death, when it "goes". The use of the word "whisper" suggests that the soul and body can communicate with one another as separate entities. Furthermore, the word "virtuous" implies that "un-virtuous" men may not be able to whisper to their souls.

Fortunately for the speaker, he seems to be a virtuous man, so this certainly applies. The separation of body and soul is an essential concept to the poem as it progresses, and it must be accepted for his entire argument to work. Donne explicates this in later stanzas. The fact that the "friends" disagree on this separation of body and soul requires more explanation, but perhaps Donne is acknowledging that people do not generally agree with his assumptions.

Donne describes the two souls of the lovers being intermixed, and the bodies as separate. Starting at line 21, this becomes a motif that continues throughout the poem: "Our two souls therefore, which are one, / Though I must go, endure not yet / A breach, but an expansion . . ." Even death cannot separate Donne’s lovers because the soul, separate from the body (as alluded to in the opening stanza) is the receptacle of love, and it does not die. Instead of complete separation, the speaker describes what happens as he "goes" as an "expansion". The expansion is explained by his analogy of compasses, but the mixing is made by his comparisons to liquid beginning at line 5. Donne makes use of the metaphor here to simplify his vision of "the soul" as something that can be melted, melted from what, he does not say, nevertheless, the reader can visualize a liquid, and he makes use of this. His use of the word silent suggests that unlike liquids, which make sound when moved, the soul makes no noise, and is something more like direct sublimation into vapor. The liquid metaphor yields images of flow and mixing; one might perceive a solution of two different substances, oil and water for instance; although they have not become one at the most elemental levels, they can be held in the same container and would be very difficult to separate completely. Furthermore, the silence indicates that the souls do not use speech, like "sigh-tempests", line 6, to make their love known. This apparently conflicts with the opening stanza where the soul can communicate with speech, but Donne infers that while the body may speak to the soul, two souls do not need speech to demonstrate magnificent love.

The metaphors of earthquakes, line 9, and celestial spheres, line 11, add to the reader’s understanding of the lovers’ relationship by adding specific details about the magnitude of the love. The "moving of th’ Earth" and "trepidation of the spheres" show great dimension and force of an extraordinary nature, almost beyond the human understanding. Donne uses these to explain how two different and gigantic events can either bring "harms and fears", or "innocence", which add to the theme of silent mixing. If celestial spheres (the largest structures imaginable) can shake with "innocence", then the souls may likewise share their love in silence, without the tumultuous rumblings of earthquakes, which "men" try to interpret. The contrast between the magnitude of earthquakes and celestial trepidation is likened to the love between two bodies and two souls. The souls, of course, are "greater far" in their capacity to love silently than the bodies.

While the early language of the poem relates lover’s souls as one, the possibility of separated bodies, yet a single mixed soul, is described:

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed root, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

The conclusion of the poem is that the soul, or "fixed root" can never be separated like the bodies. Furthermore, while the lover’s bodies are separated by great distance, they will be like the compass in that the points are wide, but the handle joins them. By using the bodies as the tenor, and a compass as the vehicle for his conceit, Donne argues that the lovers’ bodies are physically separated, but the two are joined by the soul, or "fixed root".

The distance, therefore, is insignificant since they are only spread out and not broken off—there is still a firm connection between them.

Donne uses the entire length of Valediction to make his point, which is carefully constructed like a geometric proof. He first asserts that when men pass away, the soul separates. Once the assumption is made that the soul is separate from the body, he tells us that the soul is mixed like a silent liquid, but that the silence does not make it any less magnificent. Finally, having made these assertions, the compass is used to illustrate the concept. The summation of the argument is that, having accepted the previous statements, his love should not worry about his impending journey:

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness make my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

The speaker states that he is like the "other foot" and must go away, but his strong love will only cause the soul, or fixed root, to lean a bit, like the handle of a compass when drawing large circles. It is precisely the strength, or "firmness" of her love that makes the comparison perfect, so that he comes full circle to return like the other leg of a stiff compass.

Two definitions of metaphor:

1. Metaphor (From Greek, "to carry across"): A comparison that likens two different things by identifying one as the other.

In mathematical symbols, a metaphor would require an equal sign, asserting that A=B, as in "That strange flower, the sun," a line from Wallace Stevens’ "Gubbinal" that equates the sun with a "strange flower." Unlike a simile, metaphor does not use linking words ("like," "as," "such as") to indicate similarity between two otherwise different things.

Metaphor, however, is also the general term for any comparison, including simile, metaphor, conceit, and analogy. In his column in Natural History, Stephen Jay Gould writes:

One day, as I sat at an alfresco lunch spot enjoying a view of the Acropolis, a small truck pulled up to the curb and blocked the Parthenon. I was annoyed at first, but later wonderfully amused as I watched the moving men deliver some furniture to the neighboring house. Their van said Metaphora. Of course, I realized. Phor is the verb for "carrying." And Meta is a prefix meaning "change of place, order, condition, or nature." A moving truck helps you change the order of something by carrying it from one spot to another—and is surely a metaphor. . . . A metaphor carries you from one object (which may be difficult to understand) to another (which may be more accessible and therefore helpful, by analogy, in grasping the original concern).

Metaphors, as Gould asserts, are "carriers" which help readers make "imaginative leaps." But it is the poet who must be the moving man, covering that distance, transporting the goods

I.A. Richards invented the terms tenor and vehicle to denote the two parts of a metaphor. The tenor is the literal subject; the vehicle is the figurative connection, the likeness, the thing that is compared to the subject or the carrier—like the moving van Steven Jay Gould saw in Greece. For example, the first stanza of Robert Lowell’s "For the Union Dead," contains a metaphor "a Sahara of snow"; the tenor is snow, while the vehicle is the Sahara desert. The terms can apply to similes as well. In Robert Burns’ line, "O my luve’s like a red red rose," the tenor is "my love" and the vehicle is "a red red rose."

When a metaphor is extended and elaborated (like the image of "twin compasses" John Donne presents through twelve lines of "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"), it is a conceit. (Drury, 158-159)

2. Metaphor (Greek "transference"): . . . is a trope, or figurative expression, in which a word or phrase is shifted from its normal uses to a context where it evokes new meanings. When the ordinary meaning of a word is at odds with the context, we tend to seek relevant features of the word and the situation that will reveal the intended meaning. If there is a conceptual or material connection between the word and what it denotes—e.g. using cause for effect ("I read Shakespeare," meaning his works) or part for whole ("give me a hand," meaning physical help)—the figure usually has another name (in these examples, metonymy and synedoche respectively). To understand manuscripts, one must find meanings nor predetermined by language, logic, or experience. In the terminology of traditional rhetoric, these figures are "tropes of a word," appearing in a literal context; in "tropes of a sentence," the entire context is figurative, as in allegory, fable, and (according to some) irony. (Preminger, 760)

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Notes on John Donne

Metaphysical Poetry

Metaphysical poetry arose as a reaction to the extremes of Petrarchism; one problem with Petrarchan poems is a kind of predictability-the conceit is found, presented, & elaborated, but there are few subsequent surprises. Donne and his followers like to catch us off-guard, change direction, etc., to foil expectations. Metaphysical poetry is, in general, characterized by its ingenuity, intellectuality, and frequent obscurity.

In terms of subject matter, metaphysicals reject not only Petrarchan rhetoric but also the pose of abject worship of the mistress which sonneteers had inherited via Petrarch from the troubadours; in its place they put sexual realism and an interest in introspective psychological analysis of the emotions of love and religion (sometimes expressing the one in terms of the other, and sometimes actually being metaphysical in subject matter too). These poets showed a penchant for the novel and the shocking, and relished obscurity, rough verse, strained imagery, and at their best can be startlingly effective. Donne set the pattern by writing in a diction & metre modelled on the rough give-and-take of actual speech, and usually organized his poems in the dramatic and rhetorical form of an urgent or heated argument (with reluctant mistress, intruding friend, God, Death, himself). Employed a subtle and often deliberately outrageous logic; realistic, ironic, and sometimes cynical in his treatment of the complexity of human motives, whether in matters of love or religion.

Reputation-decline in 18th-19th centuries during which time they were seen as interesting but perversely ingenious and obscure eccentrics.; big upsurge in the 20th due to the favourable press from the likes of T.S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas.

Metaphysical Conceit->a highly ingenious kind of conceit widely used by the metaphysical poets, who explored all areas of knowledge to find, in the startlingly esoteric or the shockingly commonplace, telling and unusual analogies for their ideas. Metaphysical conceits often exploit verbal logic to the point of the grotesque and sometimes achieve such extravagant turns on meaning that they become absurd (e.g. Richard Crashaw's description of Mary Magdalene's eyes as "Two walking baths; two weeping motions,/Portable and compendious oceans").

These conceits work best when the reader is given a perception of a real but previously unsuspected similarity that is enlightening; then they may speak to our minds and emotions with force. Examples of potential metaphysical conceits->love is like an oil change; love is like a postage stamp; love is like a pair of compasses; the soul of a sinner is like a damaged pot. As you can see, the temptation to be merely clever must be hard to resist, while the difficulty in making such a conceit truly effective is quite considerable.

The Flea

1. Background: Étienne Pasquier and Catherine Desroches, 1579. Pseudo-Ovidian flea poems in which the lover wishes to become a flea in order to gain enhanced access to the beloved's charms; theme is often bestialization of the lover by his own passion.

2. Plot is simple: a) speaker points to a flea that has jumped from him to the woman and bites both; b) she has hunted down and caught the flea; speaker tries to dissuade her from killing it; c) she disregards his pleas and kills it. N.B. all the action occurs between the stanzas. Elaboration: he has argued that their being bitten by the flea is tantamount to having had sex without even touching each other so that they might as well go all the way. She kills the flea, it seems, to vindicate the moral law the speaker puts in question by his argument about the flea bite-in essence she kills an offender against her chastity. Afterwards the speaker tries to "clear the memory" of the flea and in so doing completely contradicts his former argument by arguing that the flea is totally innocent; then from the flea's innocence he passes to the "harmlessness" of his own designs on the woman. In essence he says she can keep her honour while losing her virtue.

3) Since the conceit is that sex is like a flea-bite; it is relevant to consider beliefs about fleas and those about sex current at the time: a) sex involves the actual mingling of the bloods of the two participants-but this must occur in body of female if procreation is to occur; Donne cleverly evades that aspect by presuming that it does not matter where it occurs; hence he says the flea bites are tantamount to sex already. b) luckily, copulation in fleas is barren (despite their mingling of blood) because fleas reproduce in a different manner, so if their sex is parallel to that of fleas then there is no fear of pregnancy. Since fleas reproduce by being generated either 1) out of putrefaction in fluids or solids (Aristotle), or 2) out of dust (pulvis=dust; flea=pulex) via the warming rays of the sun (Pliny), the copulation of fleas is not only barren, it is unnatural. It is clear that the speaker's desire is for sex for delectation rather than for procreation ("for that is more than we would do"), so the flea image underlines his inversion of the prevailing ideals of properly ordered love.

4) In the argument about murder & suicide involved in killing flea, he seems to use the old assumption that the blood is or contains the soul, but absurdly extrapolates that to cover every drop of blood whether it be inside or outside the body. Her killing the flea shows the speciousness of this argument since they have not even been harmed much less killed thereby; so he turns this around into another piece of clever sophistry: he confuses the quantitative with the qualitative when he argues that she can lose a harmless "bit" of honour (e.g. virginity) just as she can lose a harmless bit of blood (honour, like virginity & pregnancy is generally regarded as something that does not come in degrees that can be so neatly measured).

5) What we seem to see in the poem is the speaker's perversion of reason or abuse of reason to promote passion. The reason I say "seems" here is that the intention is far from clear: is this poem a) a determined, serious effort to seduce an apparently reluctant woman (who happens to be a resourceful arguer, if of few words and much action!) or b) a pretense of seduction in which the lady plays "straightman" and squashes the flea on cue so that the speaker can demonstrate his cleverness (cf. Amoretti 75), i.e. a game between already committed lovers? This argument could not really be expected to convince even the most moronic of women-unless she were as desirous of being convinced as the speaker is of convincing her-and this one is far from moronic. She is clearly not bewildered or dazzled by these arguments. The whole poem has the air of a little intellectual game indulged in by these two, both of them knowing what the outcome will be even if they don't quite know how the conclusion will be reached, and both enjoying the game for its own sake, rather than that of a serious attempt to lead someone astray. If the poem is read this way, the fact that the argument is false, is pure sophistry, is at least beside the point and can even become a strength-it is the interaction between the participants that is central. Donne (also Spenser, see 28, 29, 75, 54) frequently uses argument as a form of love-play and posits a woman who is an intellectual match for the man.

“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”

Start with the tone of the title: both the colon and the term "forbidding" in the context of mourning sound impersonal, authoritarian, and austere, like a decree, or a piece of academic writing, or lecture room demonstration. Who is being counseled here: her, him, or both? This poem is frequently said to celebrate reticence, restraint, the withholding of shows of emotion at a temporary separation of the lovers; this suggests a sense of superiority over "dull, sublunary lovers," an "us vs. them" mentality common in Donne. The more current view is that the speaker is not as self-assured as he would wish to seem; that he seeks consolation (for himself and the woman) for fears of death on the trip and separation by the trip. His definition of the spiritual qualities of love never quite dispels his disquiet nor eases the pain of parting; consequently, the poem illustrates the failure of intellection to meet his emotional needs. Hence, he tries several images, makes several attempts to redefine things and to arrive at a consolation that works. Three main images I will examine: A) dying man, B) beaten gold, C) stiff twin compasses. A) reverses the Petrarchan convention that separation of lovers is like death: Petrarchan lovers have noisy, teary separations because the lover fears that love will vanish during his absence, that the woman will find a new guy. These lovers, being "virtuous" will have a quiet parting; but the image gets out of his control, since perfect happiness for the soul ultimately depends upon separation from the body, while happiness for lovers depends on their being together (if the image were exact, the lovers would not want to reunite or even be able to!). Hence, try B): viewing parting not as a breach but an expansion of their souls, like gold to airy thinness beat. Problems here too: 1) makes parting sound like a positively good thing; 2) the beaten gold expands without an actual increase in substance, but with an increase in fragility; 3) again, the image does not suggest the eventual reunion of the lovers. On to C): this works the best since it covers the separation, the continuous spiritual link (i.e., the mysterious "we two are really one" phenomenon of love), and the return. N.B. the figure described is a spiral, (circular [immortal] united with linear [mortal] motions; "roaming" does not suit drawing a circle). Throughout the poem, disturbances appear on the calm surface of his language, revealing that his own true emotions are suppressed only with difficulty, that there is a strong undercurrent of physical yearning for the woman: sad friends (3); melt (5); eyes, lips, hands, (20); roam (30); leans and hearkens (31); grows erect, home (32)-very physical terms that remind us of their whole beings (including bodies). Even in the most successful image, the compasses, the posture of the legs reflects both the spiritual constancy of the lovers and their physical separation. At the end of the poem, everything depends upon her fidelity (firmness, 35), so the suppressed fear of losing her comes to the surface; indeed it is built into the conceit itself. The poem expresses, rather than conquers, the pain of parting.

Holy Sonnets

There are, perhaps, two main sorts of preachers: a) those who present themselves as representatives of God and explain His word to us; and b) those who stand before God and explain our problems to Him. Donne is primarily of the latter sort.

I am a little world: cf. Geneva Bible, Rev. 17:16: "And the 10 horns which thou sawest upon the beast, are they that shall hate the whore, & shall make her desolate and naked, & shall eat her flesh and burn her with fire"; James 5: 1-3: "Go to now, ye rich men: weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupt & your garments are moth eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered and the rust of them shall be a witness against you & shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped up treasure for the last days"; and Psalms 69.9: "for the zeal of thine house has eaten me up" NB: octave-sestet structure but not syntactic shift.

Batter My Heart: Concerns the necessity of a forceful overpowering and violent reshaping of the sinner by God. The conversion paradox->one dies that he may be reborn, loses that he may gain, imprisonment to sin must be replaced by imprisonment to God's will, wherein lies the only true freedom. "Enthrall" can mean enslaved by love and by God. Paradoxical freedom in enthrallment.

Violence is the common denominator of the three quatrains. Quatrain 1: God as artisan, metalworker, sinner as damaged vessel; God is to demolish the damaged object, melt it down and make a new one

a) What God does is knock (Father), + shine (Son), + breathe (Holy Ghost)= seeks to mend (action of the Trinity when conceived as a unity)

b) What the speaker wishes Him to do is break (Father) + burn (Son) + blow (Holy Ghost)= make the speaker anew (action of the Trinity when conceived as a unity)

The aspect of God represented by the Father is His power, His omnipotentence; represented by the Son is His omniscience, His ability to enlighten us; represented by the Holy Ghost is His grace, His infusing of love into us, inspiration (literally, a breathing in)

4th term is a summing up; the unity underlying the trinity. The overall stress in lines 1-4 is God the Father's omnipotence battering the heart. The term "overthrow" prepares the military conceit of lines 5-8, which envisions the admission of God through the agency of rectified reason (rectified through love of God); symbolized in the trinity by the Son. "Weak and untrue" prepares for the sexual conceit of lines 9-12, which exemplifies the reborn understanding conceiving the consubstantiality of man and God through imagery of interpenetration: man's opening up and receiving God; a union or marriage of man and God. The Holy Ghost represents this phase. The couplet is a summing up and rounding off of the sonnet.

Death be not proud: Some critics argue that Donne's speaker is trying to convince himself that death is not to be feared, and failing dismally; the poems various arguments do not at all address the speaker's basic fears. For example, he argues on flimsy evidence that death must be better than sleep (5-6), then that sleep is better than death (11-12). The last 4 words of the poem, which should crown the argument, actually undermine it: if death is nothing to be afraid of, the speaker can hardly use it as a threat. As John Carey notes, "He stamps his foot with fine dramatic conclusiveness, and plummets straight through a trapdoor. It spoils the act, but improves the poem, for it shows how little its reasonings have impinged on the speaker's basic fears." Carey's insight into this poem is generalized by R.T Jones: it is frequently claimed that Donne's poetry shows a complete union of thought and feeling, but Jones argues that what we usually get is the exact opposite, a sense of conflict or tension between what the heart wants to be true or fears to be true and what the mind knows or can argue; a sense of the poet always trying to convince himself of something. We noted this possibility in A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. Jones cites D.H. Lawrence's statement that belief is a profound emotion that has the mind's connivance. On "Death be not proud", he points out that given his academic training, Donne must have known how bad the arguments are; that their very badness must be taken as part of the meaning of the poem. If we accept his contention that when Fate overwhelms you with a flood or chance directs lightening to your head, or a king has your head cut off or a desperate man cuts your throat, then death has no choice but to come to you (and hence is a slave to these things) then perhaps we will be less scared of Death as an abstraction, whatever that may mean, but simply transfer our terror, undiminished, to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men-leaving our predicament, if anything, somewhat worse. But we would not be thinking in terms of terror at all if we had taken seriously the earlier arguments, e.g., "from rest and sleep"-we don't take this seriously because a) we do not really accept that the relation between death and sleep is in all important respects the same as the relation between a picture and the thing depicted; and b) we cannot really believe that if a picture gives us pleasure the thing it depicts must necessarily give us more pleasure. We have been watching a conjuring trick: we don't believe the skull has been turned into a rabbit, but we admire the sleight-of-hand. Others argue that Donne's personification of death is a rhetorical device, aimed at cutting Death down to size, and the crisp cross-talk of quip and witticism shows how well he knows he can't really get away with it. Even if there are moments of real conviction (7-8), a blustering sophistry dominates. Fear of death is paraded like a captive slave and publicly routed, but it is never met on the level where it really presses. Is this because a) the speaker is so thoroughly convinced of the Christian doctrine of the afterlife that he genuinely has no fear of death and just wishes to mock it? or b) the fear of death is so powerful within the speaker that none of the arguments, including the Christian one, actually convince him deep down?

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POEM ON THE LISBON DISASTER;
Or an Examination of the Axiom, “All is Well”

There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them. They looked at her coldly, as if they were finding fault with her. And hurriedly she felt she must cover up some fault in herself. Yet what it was that she must cover up she never knew. Nevertheless, when her children were present, she always felt the centre of her heart go hard. This troubled her, and in her manner she was all the more gentle and anxious for her children, as if she loved them very much. Only she herself knew that at the centre of her heart was a hard little place that could not feel love, no, not for anybody. Everybody else said of her: "She is such a good mother. She adores her children." Only she herself, and her children themselves, knew it was not so. They read it in each other's eyes.

There were a boy and two little girls. They lived in a pleasant house, with a garden, and they had discreet servants, and felt themselves superior to anyone in the neighbourhood.

Although they lived in style, they felt always an anxiety in the house. There was never enough money. The mother had a small income, and the father had a small income, but not nearly enough for the social position which they had to keep up. The father went into town to some office. But though he had good prospects, these prospects never materialised. There was always the grinding sense of the shortage of money, though the style was always kept up.

At last the mother said: "I will see if I can't make something." But she did not know where to begin. She racked her brains, and tried this thing and the other, but could not find anything successful. The failure made deep lines come into her face. Her children were growing up, they would have to go to school. There must be more money, there must be more money. The father, who was always very handsome and expensive in his tastes, seemed as if he never would be able to do anything worth doing. And the mother, who had a great belief in herself, did not succeed any better, and her tastes were just as expensive.

And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be more money! There must be more money! The children could hear it all the time though nobody said it aloud. They heard it at Christmas, when the expensive and splendid toys filled the nursery. Behind the shining modern rocking-horse, behind the smart doll's house, a voice would start whispering: "There must be more money! There must be more money!" And the children would stop playing, to listen for a moment. They would look into each other's eyes, to see if they had all heard. And each one saw in the eyes of the other two that they too had heard. "There must be more money! There must be more money!"

It came whispering from the springs of the still-swaying rocking-horse, and even the horse, bending his wooden, champing head, heard it. The big doll, sitting so pink and smirking in her new pram, could hear it quite plainly, and seemed to be smirking all the more self-consciously because of it. The foolish puppy, too, that took the place of the teddy-bear, he was looking so extraordinarily foolish for no other reason but that he heard the secret whisper all over the house: "There must be more money!"

Yet nobody ever said it aloud. The whisper was everywhere, and therefore no one spoke it. Just as no one ever says: "We are breathing!" in spite of the fact that breath is coming and going all the time.

"Mother," said the boy Paul one day, "why don't we keep a car of our own? Why do we always use uncle's, or else a taxi?"

"Because we're the poor members of the family," said the mother.

"But why are we, mother?"

"Well - I suppose," she said slowly and bitterly, "it's because your father has no luck."

The boy was silent for some time.

"Is luck money, mother?" he asked, rather timidly.

"No, Paul. Not quite. It's what causes you to have money."

"Oh!" said Paul vaguely. "I thought when Uncle Oscar said filthy lucker, it meant money."

"Filthy lucre does mean money," said the mother. "But it's lucre, not luck."

"Oh!" said the boy. "Then what is luck, mother?"

"It's what causes you to have money. If you're lucky you have money. That's why it's better to be born lucky than rich. If you're rich, you may lose your money. But if you're lucky, you will always get more money."

"Oh! Will you? And is father not lucky?"

"Very unlucky, I should say," she said bitterly.

The boy watched her with unsure eyes.

"Why?" he asked.

"I don't know. Nobody ever knows why one person is lucky and another unlucky."

"Don't they? Nobody at all? Does nobody know?"

"Perhaps God. But He never tells."

"He ought to, then. And aren't you lucky either, mother?"

"I can't be, it I married an unlucky husband."

"But by yourself, aren't you?"

"I used to think I was, before I married. Now I think I am very unlucky indeed."

"Why?"

"Well - never mind! Perhaps I'm not really," she said.

The child looked at her to see if she meant it. But he saw, by the lines of her mouth, that she was only trying to hide something from him.

"Well, anyhow," he said stoutly, "I'm a lucky person."

"Why?" said his mother, with a sudden laugh.

He stared at her. He didn't even know why he had said it.

"God told me," he asserted, brazening it out.

"I hope He did, dear!", she said, again with a laugh, but rather bitter.

"He did, mother!"

"Excellent!" said the mother, using one of her husband's exclamations.

The boy saw she did not believe him; or rather, that she paid no attention to his assertion. This angered him somewhere, and made him want to compel her attention.

He went off by himself, vaguely, in a childish way, seeking for the clue to 'luck'. Absorbed, taking no heed of other people, he went about with a sort of stealth, seeking inwardly for luck. He wanted luck, he wanted it, he wanted it. When the two girls were playing dolls in the nursery, he would sit on his big rocking-horse, charging madly into space, with a frenzy that made the little girls peer at him uneasily. Wildly the horse careered, the waving dark hair of the boy tossed, his eyes had a strange glare in them. The little girls dared not speak to him.

When he had ridden to the end of his mad little journey, he climbed down and stood in front of his rocking-horse, staring fixedly into its lowered face. Its red mouth was slightly open, its big eye was wide and glassy-bright.

"Now!" he would silently command the snorting steed. "Now take me to where there is luck! Now take me!"

And he would slash the horse on the neck with the little whip he had asked Uncle Oscar for. He knew the horse could take him to where there was luck, if only he forced it. So he would mount again and start on his furious ride, hoping at last to get there.

"You'll break your horse, Paul!" said the nurse.

"He's always riding like that! I wish he'd leave off!" said his elder sister Joan.

But he only glared down on them in silence. Nurse gave him up. She could make nothing of him. Anyhow, he was growing beyond her.

One day his mother and his Uncle Oscar came in when he was on one of his furious rides. He did not speak to them.

"Hallo, you young jockey! Riding a winner?" said his uncle.

"Aren't you growing too big for a rocking-horse? You're not a very little boy any longer, you know," said his mother.

But Paul only gave a blue glare from his big, rather close-set eyes. He would speak to nobody when he was in full tilt. His mother watched him with an anxious expression on her face.

At last he suddenly stopped forcing his horse into the mechanical gallop and slid down.

"Well, I got there!" he announced fiercely, his blue eyes still flaring, and his sturdy long legs straddling apart.

"Where did you get to?" asked his mother.

"Where I wanted to go," he flared back at her.

"That's right, son!" said Uncle Oscar. "Don't you stop till you get there. What's the horse's name?"

"He doesn't have a name," said the boy.

"Gets on without all right?" asked the uncle.

"Well, he has different names. He was called Sansovino last week."

"Sansovino, eh? Won the Ascot. How did you know this name?"

"He always talks about horse-races with Bassett," said Joan.

The uncle was delighted to find that his small nephew was posted with all the racing news. Bassett, the young gardener, who had been wounded in the left foot in the war and had got his present job through Oscar Cresswell, whose batman he had been, was a perfect blade of the 'turf'. He lived in the racing events, and the small boy lived with him.

Oscar Cresswell got it all from Bassett.

"Master Paul comes and asks me, so I can't do more than tell him, sir," said Bassett, his face terribly serious, as if he were speaking of religious matters.

"And does he ever put anything on a horse he fancies?"

"Well - I don't want to give him away - he's a young sport, a fine sport, sir. Would you mind asking him himself? He sort of takes a pleasure in it, and perhaps he'd feel I was giving him away, sir, if you don't mind.

Bassett was serious as a church.

The uncle went back to his nephew and took him off for a ride in the car.

"Say, Paul, old man, do you ever put anything on a horse?" the uncle asked.

The boy watched the handsome man closely.

"Why, do you think I oughtn't to?" he parried.

"Not a bit of it! I thought perhaps you might give me a tip for the Lincoln."

The car sped on into the country, going down to Uncle Oscar's place in Hampshire.

"Honour bright?" said the nephew.

"Honour bright, son!" said the uncle.

"Well, then, Daffodil."

"Daffodil! I doubt it, sonny. What about Mirza?"

"I only know the winner," said the boy. "That's Daffodil."

"Daffodil, eh?"

There was a pause. Daffodil was an obscure horse comparatively.

"Uncle!"

"Yes, son?"

"You won't let it go any further, will you? I promised Bassett."

"Bassett be damned, old man! What's he got to do with it?"

"We're partners. We've been partners from the first. Uncle, he lent me my first five shillings, which I lost. I promised him, honour bright, it was only between me and him; only you gave me that ten-shilling note I started winning with, so I thought you were lucky. You won't let it go any further, will you?"

The boy gazed at his uncle from those big, hot, blue eyes, set rather close together. The uncle stirred and laughed uneasily.

"Right you are, son! I'll keep your tip private. How much are you putting on him?"

"All except twenty pounds," said the boy. "I keep that in reserve."

The uncle thought it a good joke.

"You keep twenty pounds in reserve, do you, you young romancer? What are you betting, then?"

"I'm betting three hundred," said the boy gravely. "But it's between you and me, Uncle Oscar! Honour bright?"

"It's between you and me all right, you young Nat Gould," he said, laughing. "But where's your three hundred?"

"Bassett keeps it for me. We're partners."

"You are, are you! And what is Bassett putting on Daffodil?"

"He won't go quite as high as I do, I expect. Perhaps he'll go a hundred and fifty."

"What, pennies?" laughed the uncle.

"Pounds," said the child, with a surprised look at his uncle. "Bassett keeps a bigger reserve than I do."

Between wonder and amusement Uncle Oscar was silent. He pursued the matter no further, but he determined to take his nephew with him to the Lincoln races.

"Now, son," he said, "I'm putting twenty on Mirza, and I'll put five on for you on any horse you fancy. What's your pick?"

"Daffodil, uncle."

"No, not the fiver on Daffodil!"

"I should if it was my own fiver," said the child.

"Good! Good! Right you are! A fiver for me and a fiver for you on Daffodil."

The child had never been to a race-meeting before, and his eyes were blue fire. He pursed his mouth tight and watched. A Frenchman just in front had put his money on Lancelot. Wild with excitement, he flayed his arms up and down, yelling "Lancelot!, Lancelot!" in his French accent.

Daffodil came in first, Lancelot second, Mirza third. The child, flushed and with eyes blazing, was curiously serene. His uncle brought him four five-pound notes, four to one.

"What am I to do with these?" he cried, waving them before the boys eyes.

"I suppose we'll talk to Bassett," said the boy. "I expect I have fifteen hundred now; and twenty in reserve; and this twenty."

His uncle studied him for some moments.

"Look here, son!" he said. "You're not serious about Bassett and that fifteen hundred, are you?"

"Yes, I am. But it's between you and me, uncle. Honour bright?"

"Honour bright all right, son! But I must talk to Bassett."

"If you'd like to be a partner, uncle, with Bassett and me, we could all be partners. Only, you'd have to promise, honour bright, uncle, not to let it go beyond us three. Bassett and I are lucky, and you must be lucky, because it was your ten shillings I started winning with ..."

Uncle Oscar took both Bassett and Paul into Richmond Park for an afternoon, and there they talked.

"It's like this, you see, sir," Bassett said. "Master Paul would get me talking about racing events, spinning yarns, you know, sir. And he was always keen on knowing if I'd made or if I'd lost. It's about a year since, now, that I put five shillings on Blush of Dawn for him: and we lost. Then the luck turned, with that ten shillings he had from you: that we put on Singhalese. And since that time, it's been pretty steady, all things considering. What do you say, Master Paul?"

"We're all right when we're sure," said Paul. "It's when we're not quite sure that we go down."

"Oh, but we're careful then," said Bassett.

"But when are you sure?" smiled Uncle Oscar.

"It's Master Paul, sir," said Bassett in a secret, religious voice. "It's as if he had it from heaven. Like Daffodil, now, for the Lincoln. That was as sure as eggs."

"Did you put anything on Daffodil?" asked Oscar Cresswell.

"Yes, sir, I made my bit."

"And my nephew?"

Bassett was obstinately silent, looking at Paul.

"I made twelve hundred, didn't I, Bassett? I told uncle I was putting three hundred on Daffodil."

"That's right," said Bassett, nodding.

"But where's the money?" asked the uncle.

"I keep it safe locked up, sir. Master Paul he can have it any minute he likes to ask for it."

"What, fifteen hundred pounds?"

"And twenty! And forty, that is, with the twenty he made on the course."

"It's amazing!" said the uncle.

"If Master Paul offers you to be partners, sir, I would, if I were you: if you'll excuse me," said Bassett.

Oscar Cresswell thought about it.

"I'll see the money," he said.

They drove home again, and, sure enough, Bassett came round to the garden-house with fifteen hundred pounds in notes. The twenty pounds reserve was left with Joe Glee, in the Turf Commission deposit.

"You see, it's all right, uncle, when I'm sure! Then we go strong, for all we're worth, don't we, Bassett?"

"We do that, Master Paul."

"And when are you sure?" said the uncle, laughing.

"Oh, well, sometimes I'm absolutely sure, like about Daffodil," said the boy; "and sometimes I have an idea; and sometimes I haven't even an idea, have I, Bassett? Then we're careful, because we mostly go down."

"You do, do you! And when you're sure, like about Daffodil, what makes you sure, sonny?"

"Oh, well, I don't know," said the boy uneasily. "I'm sure, you know, uncle; that's all."

"It's as if he had it from heaven, sir," Bassett reiterated.

"I should say so!" said the uncle.

But he became a partner. And when the Leger was coming on Paul was 'sure' about Lively Spark, which was a quite inconsiderable horse. The boy insisted on putting a thousand on the horse, Bassett went for five hundred, and Oscar Cresswell two hundred. Lively Spark came in first, and the betting had been ten to one against him. Paul had made ten thousand.

"You see," he said. "I was absolutely sure of him."

Even Oscar Cresswell had cleared two thousand.

"Look here, son," he said, "this sort of thing makes me nervous."

"It needn't, uncle! Perhaps I shan't be sure again for a long time."

"But what are you going to do with your money?" asked the uncle.

"Of course," said the boy, "I started it for mother. She said she had no luck, because father is unlucky, so I thought if I was lucky, it might stop whispering."

"What might stop whispering?"

"Our house. I hate our house for whispering."

"What does it whisper?"

"Why - why" - the boy fidgeted - "why, I don't know. But it's always short of money, you know, uncle."

"I know it, son, I know it."

"You know people send mother writs, don't you, uncle?"

"I'm afraid I do," said the uncle.

"And then the house whispers, like people laughing at you behind your back. It's awful, that is! I thought if I was lucky -"

"You might stop it," added the uncle.

The boy watched him with big blue eyes, that had an uncanny cold fire in them, and he said never a word.

"Well, then!" said the uncle. "What are we doing?"

"I shouldn't like mother to know I was lucky," said the boy.

"Why not, son?"

"She'd stop me."

"I don't think she would."

"Oh!" - and the boy writhed in an odd way - "I don't want her to know, uncle."

"All right, son! We'll manage it without her knowing."

They managed it very easily. Paul, at the other's suggestion, handed over five thousand pounds to his uncle, who deposited it with the family lawyer, who was then to inform Paul's mother that a relative had put five thousand pounds into his hands, which sum was to be paid out a thousand pounds at a time, on the mother's birthday, for the next five years.

"So she'll have a birthday present of a thousand pounds for five successive years," said Uncle Oscar. "I hope it won't make it all the harder for her later."

Paul's mother had her birthday in November. The house had been 'whispering' worse than ever lately, and, even in spite of his luck, Paul could not bear up against it. He was very anxious to see the effect of the birthday letter, telling his mother about the thousand pounds.

When there were no visitors, Paul now took his meals with his parents, as he was beyond the nursery control. His mother went into town nearly every day. She had discovered that she had an odd knack of sketching furs and dress materials, so she worked secretly in the studio of a friend who was the chief 'artist' for the leading drapers. She drew the figures of ladies in furs and ladies in silk and sequins for the newspaper advertisements. This young woman artist earned several thousand pounds a year, but Paul's mother only made several hundreds, and she was again dissatisfied. She so wanted to be first in something, and she did not succeed, even in making sketches for drapery advertisements.

She was down to breakfast on the morning of her birthday. Paul watched her face as she read her letters. He knew the lawyer's letter. As his mother read it, her face hardened and became more expressionless. Then a cold, determined look came on her mouth. She hid the letter under the pile of others, and said not a word about it.

"Didn't you have anything nice in the post for your birthday, mother?" said Paul.

"Quite moderately nice," she said, her voice cold and hard and absent.

She went away to town without saying more.

But in the afternoon Uncle Oscar appeared. He said Paul's mother had had a long interview with the lawyer, asking if the whole five thousand could not be advanced at once, as she was in debt.

"What do you think, uncle?" said the boy.

"I leave it to you, son."

"Oh, let her have it, then! We can get some more with the other," said the boy.

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, laddie!" said Uncle Oscar.

"But I'm sure to know for the Grand National; or the Lincolnshire; or else the Derby. I'm sure to know for one of them," said Paul.

So Uncle Oscar signed the agreement, and Paul's mother touched the whole five thousand. Then something very curious happened. The voices in the house suddenly went mad, like a chorus of frogs on a spring evening. There were certain new furnishings, and Paul had a tutor. He was really going to Eton, his father's school, in the following autumn. There were flowers in the winter, and a blossoming of the luxury Paul's mother had been used to. And yet the voices in the house, behind the sprays of mimosa and almond-blossom, and from under the piles of iridescent cushions, simply trilled and screamed in a sort of ecstasy: "There must be more money! Oh-h-h; there must be more money. Oh, now, now-w! Now-w-w - there must be more money! - more than ever! More than ever!"

It frightened Paul terribly. He studied away at his Latin and Greek with his tutor. But his intense hours were spent with Bassett. The Grand National had gone by: he had not 'known', and had lost a hundred pounds. Summer was at hand. He was in agony for the Lincoln. But even for the Lincoln he didn't 'know', and he lost fifty pounds. He became wild-eyed and strange, as if something were going to explode in him.

"Let it alone, son! Don't you bother about it!" urged Uncle Oscar. But it was as if the boy couldn't really hear what his uncle was saying.

"I've got to know for the Derby! I've got to know for the Derby!" the child reiterated, his big blue eyes blazing with a sort of madness.

His mother noticed how overwrought he was.

"You'd better go to the seaside. Wouldn't you like to go now to the seaside, instead of waiting? I think you'd better," she said, looking down at him anxiously, her heart curiously heavy because of him.

But the child lifted his uncanny blue eyes.

"I couldn't possibly go before the Derby, mother!" he said. "I couldn't possibly!"

"Why not?" she said, her voice becoming heavy when she was opposed. "Why not? You can still go from the seaside to see the Derby with your Uncle Oscar, if that that's what you wish. No need for you to wait here. Besides, I think you care too much about these races. It's a bad sign. My family has been a gambling family, and you won't know till you grow up how much damage it has done. But it has done damage. I shall have to send Bassett away, and ask Uncle Oscar not to talk racing to you, unless you promise to be reasonable about it: go away to the seaside and forget it. You're all nerves!"

"I'll do what you like, mother, so long as you don't send me away till after the Derby," the boy said.

"Send you away from where? Just from this house?"

"Yes," he said, gazing at her.

"Why, you curious child, what makes you care about this house so much, suddenly? I never knew you loved it."

He gazed at her without speaking. He had a secret within a secret, something he had not divulged, even to Bassett or to his Uncle Oscar.

But his mother, after standing undecided and a little bit sullen for some moments, said: "Very well, then! Don't go to the seaside till after the Derby, if you don't wish it. But promise me you won't think so much about horse-racing and events as you call them!"

"Oh no," said the boy casually. "I won't think much about them, mother. You needn't worry. I wouldn't worry, mother, if I were you."

"If you were me and I were you," said his mother, "I wonder what we should do!"

"But you know you needn't worry, mother, don't you?" the boy repeated.

"I should be awfully glad to know it," she said wearily.

"Oh, well, you can, you know. I mean, you ought to know you needn't worry," he insisted.

"Ought I? Then I'll see about it," she said.

Paul's secret of secrets was his wooden horse, that which had no name. Since he was emancipated from a nurse and a nursery-governess, he had had his rocking-horse removed to his own bedroom at the top of the house.

"Surely you're too big for a rocking-horse!" his mother had remonstrated.

"Well, you see, mother, till I can have a real horse, I like to have some sort of animal about," had been his quaint answer.

"Do you feel he keeps you company?" she laughed.

"Oh yes! He's very good, he always keeps me company, when I'm there," said Paul.

So the horse, rather shabby, stood in an arrested prance in the boy's bedroom.

The Derby was drawing near, and the boy grew more and more tense. He hardly heard what was spoken to him, he was very frail, and his eyes were really uncanny. His mother had sudden strange seizures of uneasiness about him. Sometimes, for half an hour, she would feel a sudden anxiety about him that was almost anguish. She wanted to rush to him at once, and know he was safe.

Two nights before the Derby, she was at a big party in town, when one of her rushes of anxiety about her boy, her first-born, gripped her heart till she could hardly speak. She fought with the feeling, might and main, for she believed in common sense. But it was too strong. She had to leave the dance and go downstairs to telephone to the country. The children's nursery-governess was terribly surprised and startled at being rung up in the night.

"Are the children all right, Miss Wilmot?"

"Oh yes, they are quite all right."

"Master Paul? Is he all right?"

"He went to bed as right as a trivet. Shall I run up and look at him?"

"No," said Paul's mother reluctantly. "No! Don't trouble. It's all right. Don't sit up. We shall be home fairly soon." She did not want her son's privacy intruded upon.

"Very good," said the governess.

It was about one o'clock when Paul's mother and father drove up to their house. All was still. Paul's mother went to her room and slipped off her white fur cloak. She had told her maid not to wait up for her. She heard her husband downstairs, mixing a whisky and soda.

And then, because of the strange anxiety at her heart, she stole upstairs to her son's room. Noiselessly she went along the upper corridor. Was there a faint noise? What was it?

She stood, with arrested muscles, outside his door, listening. There was a strange, heavy, and yet not loud noise. Her heart stood still. It was a soundless noise, yet rushing and powerful. Something huge, in violent, hushed motion. What was it? What in God's name was it? She ought to know. She felt that she knew the noise. She knew what it was.

Yet she could not place it. She couldn't say what it was. And on and on it went, like a madness.

Softly, frozen with anxiety and fear, she turned the door-handle.

The room was dark. Yet in the space near the window, she heard and saw something plunging to and fro. She gazed in fear and amazement.

Then suddenly she switched on the light, and saw her son, in his green pyjamas, madly surging on the rocking-horse. The blaze of light suddenly lit him up, as he urged the wooden horse, and lit her up, as she stood, blonde, in her dress of pale green and crystal, in the doorway.

"Paul!" she cried. "Whatever are you doing?"

"It's Malabar!" he screamed in a powerful, strange voice. "It's Malabar!"

His eyes blazed at her for one strange and senseless second, as he ceased urging his wooden horse. Then he fell with a crash to the ground, and she, all her tormented motherhood flooding upon her, rushed to gather him up.

But he was unconscious, and unconscious he remained, with some brain-fever. He talked and tossed, and his mother sat stonily by his side.

"Malabar! It's Malabar! Bassett, Bassett, I know! It's Malabar!"

So the child cried, trying to get up and urge the rocking-horse that gave him his inspiration.

"What does he mean by Malabar?" asked the heart-frozen mother.

"I don't know," said the father stonily.

"What does he mean by Malabar?" she asked her brother Oscar.

"It's one of the horses running for the Derby," was the answer.

And, in spite of himself, Oscar Cresswell spoke to Bassett, and himself put a thousand on Malabar: at fourteen to one.

The third day of the illness was critical: they were waiting for a change. The boy, with his rather long, curly hair, was tossing ceaselessly on the pillow. He neither slept nor regained consciousness, and his eyes were like blue stones. His mother sat, feeling her heart had gone, turned actually into a stone.

In the evening Oscar Cresswell did not come, but Bassett sent a message, saying could he come up for one moment, just one moment? Paul's mother was very angry at the intrusion, but on second thoughts she agreed. The boy was the same. Perhaps Bassett might bring him to consciousness.

The gardener, a shortish fellow with a little brown moustache and sharp little brown eyes, tiptoed into the room, touched his imaginary cap to Paul's mother, and stole to the bedside, staring with glittering, smallish eyes at the tossing, dying child.

"Master Paul!" he whispered. "Master Paul! Malabar came in first all right, a clean win. I did as you told me. You've made over seventy thousand pounds, you have; you've got over eighty thousand. Malabar came in all right, Master Paul."

"Malabar! Malabar! Did I say Malabar, mother? Did I say Malabar? Do you think I'm lucky, mother? I knew Malabar, didn't I? Over eighty thousand pounds! I call that lucky, don't you, mother? Over eighty thousand pounds! I knew, didn't I know I knew? Malabar came in all right. If I ride my horse till I'm sure, then I tell you, Bassett, you can go as high as you like. Did you go for all you were worth, Bassett?"

"I went a thousand on it, Master Paul."

"I never told you, mother, that if I can ride my horse, and get there, then I'm absolutely sure - oh, absolutely! Mother, did I ever tell you? I am lucky!"

"No, you never did," said his mother.

But the boy died in the night.

And even as he lay dead, his mother heard her brother's voice saying to her, "My God, Hester, you're eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he's best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking-horse to find a winner."

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Jonathan Swift’s Religious Beliefs

Swift was a clergyman, a member of the Church of Ireland, the Irish branch of the Anglican Church; and as such he was a militant defender of his church (and his own career prospects) in the face of the threats to its continued existence posed by Roman Catholicism at home in Ireland (which was overwhelmingly Catholic) and in England, where Swift and his peers saw the Catholics (and, at the other religious and political extreme, the Dissenters) as threatening not only the Anglican Church but the English Constitution.

Swift was ostensibly a conservative by nature: he instinctively sought stability in religion as in politics, but stability which insured personal freedoms. Indeed, so far as he was concerned, religion, morality, and politics were inseparable: he consistently attacked theological attempts (even within Anglicanism itself) to define and limit orthodoxy — attempts which, he felt, led ultimately to anarchic dissent. The divisive tendencies of Mankind had, he believed, over the centuries, promoted the general decay of Christianity itself, which had lost its original clarity, simplicity, and coherence. The Truth had been mishandled, corrupted, by men who had behaved like Yahoos. He adhered to the tenets of the Anglican Church because he had been brought up to respect them, because the Church of Ireland was the church of his social class, and because his own ambitions were involved in its success, but also because he saw the Church as a force for rationality and moderation; as occupying a perilous middle ground between the opposing adherents of Rome and Geneva.

Underlying all of Swift's religious concerns, underlying his apparent conservatism, which was really a form of radicalism, was his belief that in Man God had created an animal which was not inherently rational but only capable, on occasion, of behaving reasonably: only, as he put it, rationis capax. It is our tendency to disappoint, in this respect, that he rages against: his works embody his attempts to maintain order and reason in a world which tended toward chaos and disorder, and he concerned himself more with the concrete social, political, and moral aspects of human nature than with the abstractions of philosophy, theology, and metaphysics.

A Brief Biography

Jonathan Swift was born on November 30, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland, the son of Protestant Anglo-Irish parents: his ancestors had been Royalists, and all his life he would be a High-Churchman. His father, also Jonathan, died a few months before he was born, upon which his mother, Abigail, returned to England, leaving her son behind, in the care of relatives. In 1673, at the age of six, Swift began his education at Kilkenny Grammar School, which was, at the time, the best in Ireland. Between 1682 and 1686 he attended, and graduated from, Trinity College in Dublin, though he was not, apparently, an exemplary student.

In 1688 William of Orange invaded England, initiating the Glorious Revolution: with Dublin in political turmoil, Trinity College was closed, and an ambitious Swift took the opportunity to go to England, where he hoped to gain preferment in the Anglican Church. In England, in 1689, he became secretary to Sir William Temple, a diplomat and man of letters, at Moor Park in Surrey. There Swift read extensively in his patron's library, and met Esther Johnson, who would become his "Stella," and it was there, too, that he began to suffer from Meniere's Disease, a disturbance of the inner ear which produces nausea and vertigo, and which was little understood in Swift's day. In 1690, at the advice of his doctors, Swift returned to Ireland, but the following year he was back with Temple in England. He visited Oxford in 1691: in 1692, with Temple's assistance, he received an M. A. degree from that University, and published his first poem: on reading it, John Dryden, a distant relation, is said to have remarked "Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet."

In 1694, still anxious to advance himself within the Church of England, he left Temple's household and returned to Ireland to take holy orders. In 1695 he was ordained as a priest in the Church of Ireland, the Irish branch of the Anglican Church, and the following year he returned to Temple and Moor Park.

Between 1696 and 1699 Swift composed most of his first great work, A Tale of a Tub, a prose satire on the religious extremes represented by Roman Catholicism and Calvinism, and in 1697 he wrote The Battle of the Books, a satire defending Temple's conservative but beseiged position in the contemporary literary controversy as to whether the works of the "Ancients" — the great authors of classical antiquity — were to be preferred to those of the "Moderns." In 1699 Temple died, and Swift traveled to Ireland as chaplain and secretary to the Earl of Berkeley.

In 1700 he was instituted Vicar of Laracor — provided, that is, with what was known as a "Living" — and given a prebend in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. These appointments were a bitter disappointment for a man who had longed to remain in England. In 1701 Swift was awarded a D. D. from Dublin University, and published his first political pamphlet, supporting the Whigs against the Tories. 1704 saw the anonymous publication of A Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the Books, and The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit.

In 1707 Swift was sent to London as emissary of Irish clergy seeking remission of tax on Irish clerical incomes. His requests were rejected, however, by the Whig government and by Queen Anne, who suspected him of being irreligious. While in London he he met Esther Vanhomrigh, who would become his "Vanessa." During the next few years he went back and forth between Ireland and England, where he was involved — largely as an observer rather than a participant — in the highest English political circles.

In 1708 Swift met Addison and Steele, and published his Bickerstaff Papers, satirical attacks upon an astrologer, John Partridge, and a series of ironical pamphlets on church questions, including An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity.

In 1710, which saw the publication of "A Description of a City Shower," Swift, disgusted with their alliance with the Dissenters, fell out with Whigs, allied himself with the Tories, and became the editor of the Tory newspaper The Examiner. Between 1710 and 1713 he also wrote the famous series of letters to Esther Johnson which would eventually be published as The Journal to Stella. In 1713 Swift was installed as Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin — a promotion which was, again, a disappointment.

The Scriblerus Club, whose members included Swift, Pope, Congreve, Gay, and Arbuthnot, was founded in 1714. In the same year, much more unhappily for Swift, Queen Anne died, and George I took the throne. With his accession the Tories fell from power, and Swift's hopes for preferment in England came to an end: he returned to Ireland "to die," as he says, "like a poisoned rat in a hole." In 1716 Swift may or may not have married Esther Johnson. A period of literary silence and personal depression ensued, but beginning in 1718, he broke the silence, and began to publish a series of powerful tracts on Irish problems.

In 1720 he began work upon Gulliver's Travels, intended, as he says in a letter to Pope, "to vex the world, not to divert it." 1724-25 saw the publication of The Drapier Letters, which gained Swift enormous popularity in Ireland, and the completion of Gulliver's Travels. The progressive darkness of the latter work is an indication of the extent to which his misanthropic tendencies became more and more markedly manifest, had taken greater and greater hold upon his mind. In 1726 he visited England once again, and stayed with Pope at Twickenham: in the same year Gulliver's Travels was published.

Swift's final trip to England took place in 1727. Between 1727 and 1736 publication of five volumes of Swift-Pope Miscellanies. "Stella" died in 1728. In the following year A Modest Proposal was published. 1731 saw the publication of Swift's ghastly "A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed."

By 1735, when a collected edition of his Works was published in Dublin, his Meniere's Disease became more acute, resulting in periods of dizziness and nausea: at the same time, prematurely, his memory was beginning to deteriorate. During 1738 he slipped gradually into senility, and finally suffered a paralytic stroke: in 1742 guardians were officially appointed to care for his affairs.

Swift died on October 19, 1745. The following is Yeats's poetic version (a very free translation) of the Latin epitaph which Swift composed for himself:

Swift sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty.

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Gulliver’s Travels: An Introduction

Gulliver's Travels is a misanthropic anatomy of human nature; a sardonic looking-glass. It asks its readers to refute it, to deny that it has not adequately characterized human nature and society. Each of the four books has a different theme, but all are attempts to deflate human pride. Book I, written between 1721 and 1725, may reflect the concerns of Swift's own day, and of his own life — it may be a politico-sociological treatise in the form of a satire; a protest against Imperialism and Colonialism; an attack on the corrupt Whig oligarchy which had displaced the Swift's Tories in London — a defence of Tory policies, an attack on the Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, and on the expensive and bloody trade wars which had accompanied the twelve years of Whig government — but it is also, on a deeper level, a satire on the universal human tendency to abuse political power and authority, to manipulate others and deceive ourselves. It is at once a folk-myth, a children's story, and a misanthrope's gift to mankind: in Lilliput, which is, quite literally, a microcosm, the vices and follies not merely of England but of all mankind are epitomized. Swift points out that when men are six inches tall, their squabbles seem petty, and their pomp and ceremony ridiculous: he leaves it to us to take his point.

The satire in Book IV is darker and more savage: as an evaluation of the human condition, it frightened the wits out of most of the most eminent Victorians, and remains profoundly disturbing today. It suggests that the aspects of our lives of which we are most proud are merely slightly more complex versions of the activities which, when they are engaged in by Yahoos, we recognize as being foul, brutal, and disgusting. In contrasting the Houhbynhynms with the Yahoos, Swift concerns himself, too, with the dichotomy, inherent in all human beings, between reason and unreason; between sanity and madness. He implies that though Man is neither a rational intellect nor, wholly, a passionate beast, neither a Houhynhynm nor a Yahoo, he inclines to the bestial. In this final book Swift seems to despair: for Gulliver, overwhelmed, as perhaps Swift himself was, by a black, misanthropic, despairing vision of reality, the only middle ground left between the dreamy utopia, the ironically "ideal" society of the Houhynhynms, and the abyss of Yahooism seems to be a stable in England. We cannot identify with the Houhynhynms, but we can identify only too well with the Yahoos: the closer we look at them the more horrible, because more identifiably human, they become. Is there a moral to Book IV?

Swift’s Attitude toward Science and Technology

Swift was an upper-class conservative who undoubtedly looked down upon, and frequently derided, mechanists and scientists of the sort exemplified by the members of the Royal Society — disciples of Francis Bacon, who were even then threatening to remake the world in their own image. He lived in a time when a great deal of what passed for science was, at best, pseudo-science. He had little use for abstract science or technology — which he satirized unmercifully in the third book of Gulliver's Travels, the voyage to Laputa — but he was not opposed to science or to scientific experiment if it could be genuinely useful to mankind: he read and approved of Bacon's The Advancement of Learning, for example. He was not, that is, anti-intellectual, but he was passionately opposed to the useless follies of the charlatans, the quacks, the cheats, the speculators, and the virtuosi — to the "aerial studies" of the chymists, mathematicians, projectors, and the rest of that speculative tribe" — who lost themselves in useless abstractions, who wasted time and money (their own, and more importantly, that of gullibles) in vain or extravagant experimentation.

Most importantly, however, he perceived — long before others realized it — that science was ethically and morally neutral; that it could be put to evil uses as easily as to good. Swift insisted that human beings be reasonable, and that their efforts be be both useful and moral, and he found too little practicality and too little morality in the science of his day. He was unwilling to sacrifice moral and ethical considerations to scientific abstractions: it seems unnecessary to remark that subsequent events seem to have proven many of his assumptions correct.

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A Treatise on Good Manners and Breeding – Swift

Jonathan Swift


GOOD manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse.	1
Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company.	2
As the best law is founded upon reason, so are the best manners. And as some lawyers have introduced unreasonable things into common law, so likewise many teachers have introduced absurd things into common good manners.	3
One principal point of this art is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men; our superiors, our equals, and those below us.	4
For instance, to press either of the two former to eat or drink is a breach of manners; but a farmer or a tradesman must be thus treated, or else it will be difficult to persuade them that they are welcome.	5
Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners; without some one of these defects, no man will behave himself ill for want of experience; or of what, in the language of fools, is called knowing the world.	6
I defy any one to assign an incident wherein reason will not direct us what we are to say or do in company, if we are not misled by pride or ill nature.	7
Therefore I insist that good sense is the principal foundation of good manners; but because the former is a gift which very few among mankind are possessed of, therefore all the civilized nations of the world have agreed upon fixing some rules for common behaviour, best suited to their general customs, or fancies, as a kind of artificial good sense, to supply the defects of reason. Without which the gentlemanly part of dunces would be perpetually at cuffs, as they seldom fail when they happen to be drunk, or engaged in squabbles about women or play. And, God be thanked, there hardly happens a duel in a year, which may not be imputed to one of those three motives. Upon which account, I should be exceedingly sorry to find the legislature make any new laws against the practice of duelling; because the methods are easy and many for a wise man to avoid a quarrel with honour, or engage in it with innocence. And I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own; where the law hath not been able to find an expedient.	8
As the common forms of good manners were intended for regulating the conduct of those who have weak understandings; so they have been corrupted by the persons for whose use they were contrived. For these people have fallen into a needless and endless way of multiplying ceremonies, which have been extremely troublesome to those who practise them, and insupportable to everybody else: insomuch that wise men are often more uneasy at the over civility of these refiners, than they could possibly be in the conversations of peasants or mechanics.	9
The impertinencies of this ceremonial behaviour are nowhere better seen than at those tables where ladies preside, who value themselves upon account of their good breeding; where a man must reckon upon passing an hour without doing any one thing he has a mind to; unless he will be so hardy to break through all the settled decorum of the family. She determines what he loves best, and how much he shall eat; and if the master of the house happens to be of the same disposition, he proceeds in the same tryrannical manner to prescribe in the drinking part: at the same time, you are under the necessity of answering a thousand apologies for your entertainment. And although a good deal of this humour is pretty well worn off among many people of the best fashion, yet too much of it still remains, especially in the country; where an honest gentleman assured me, that having been kept four days, against his will, at a friend’s house, with all the circumstances of hiding his boots, locking up the stable, and other contrivances of the like nature, he could not remember, from the moment he came into the house to the moment he left it, any one thing, wherein his inclination was not directly contradicted; as if the whole family had entered into a combination to torment him.	10
But, besides all this, it would be endless to recount the many foolish and ridiculous accidents I have observed among these unfortunate proselytes to ceremony. I have seen a duchess fairly knocked down, by the precipitancy of an officious coxcomb running to save her the trouble of opening a door. I remember, upon a birthday at court, a great lady was utterly desperate by a dish of sauce let fall by a page directly upon her head-dress and brocade, while she gave a sudden turn to her elbow upon some point of ceremony with the person who sat next her. Monsieur Buys, the Dutch envoy, whose politics and manners were much of a size, brought a son with him, about thirteen years old, to a great table at court. The boy and his father, whatever they put on their plates, they first offered round in order, to every person in the company; so that we could not get a minute’s quiet during the whole dinner. At last their two plates happened to encounter, and with so much violence, that, being china, they broke in twenty pieces, and stained half the company with wet sweetmeats and cream.	11
There is a pedantry in manners, as in all arts and sciences; and sometimes in trades. Pedantry is properly the overrating any kind of knowledge we pretend to. And if that kind of knowledge be a trifle in itself, the pedantry is the greater. For which reason I look upon fiddlers, dancing-masters, heralds, masters of the ceremony, &c. to be greater pedants than Lipsius, or the elder Scaliger. With these kind of pedants, the court, while I knew it, was always plentifully stocked; I mean from the gentleman usher (at least) inclusive, downward to the gentleman porter; who are, generally speaking, the most insignificant race of people that this island can afford, and with the smallest tincture of good manners, which is the only trade they profess. For being wholly illiterate, and conversing chiefly with each other, they reduce the whole system of breeding within the forms and circles of their several offices; and as they are below the notice of ministers, they live and die in court under all revolutions with great obsequiousness to those who are in any degree of favour or credit, and with rudeness or insolence to everybody else. Whence I have long concluded, that good manners are not a plant of the court growth; for if they were, those people who have understandings directly of a level for such acquirements, and who have served such long apprenticeships to nothing else, would certainly have picked them up. For as to the great officers, who attend the prince’s person or councils, or preside in his family, they are a transient body, who have no better a title to good manners than their neighbours, nor will probably have recourse to gentlemen ushers for instruction. So that I know little to be learnt at court upon this head, except in the material circumstance of dress; wherein the authority of the maids of honour must indeed be allowed to be almost equal to that of a favourite actress.	12
I remember a passage my Lord Bolingbroke told me, that going to receive Prince Eugene of Savoy at his landing, in order to conduct him immediately to the Queen, the prince said, he was much concerned that he could not see her Majesty that night; for Monsieur Hoffman (who was then by) had assured his Highness that he could not be admitted into her presence with a tied-up periwig; that his equipage was not arrived; and that he had endeavoured in vain to borrow a long one among all his valets and pages. My lord turned the matter into a jest, and brought the Prince to her Majesty; for which he was highly censured by the whole tribe of gentlemen ushers; among whom Monsieur Hoffman, an old dull resident of the Emperor’s, had picked up this material point of ceremony; and which, I believe, was the best lesson he had learned in five-and-twenty years’ residence.	13
I make a difference between good manners and good breeding; although, in order to vary my expression, I am sometimes forced to confound them. By the first, I only understand the art of remembering and applying certain settled forms of general behaviour. But good breeding is of a much larger extent; for besides an uncommon degree of literature sufficient to qualify a gentleman for reading a play, or a political pamphlet, it takes in a great compass of knowledge; no less than that of dancing, fighting, gaming, making the circle of Italy, riding the great horse, and speaking French; not to mention some other secondary, or subaltern accomplishments, which are more easily acquired. So that the difference between good breeding and good manners lies in this, that the former cannot be attained to by the best understandings, without study and labour; whereas a tolerable degree of reason will instruct us in every part of good manners, without other assistance.	14
I can think of nothing more useful upon this subject, than to point out some particulars, wherein the very essentials of good manners are concerned, the neglect or perverting of which doth very much disturb the good commerce of the world, by introducing a traffic of mutual uneasiness in most companies.	15
First, a necessary part of good manners, is a punctual observance of time at our own dwellings, or those of others, or at third places; whether upon matter of civility, business, or diversion; which rule, though it be a plain dictate of common reason, yet the greatest minister I ever knew was the greatest trespasser against it; by which all his business doubled upon him, and placed him in a continual arrear. Upon which I often used to rally him, as deficient in point of good manners. I have known more than one ambassador, and secretary of state with a very moderate portion of intellectuals, execute their offices with good success and applause, by the mere force of exactness and regularity. If you duly observe time for the service of another, it doubles the obligation; if upon your own account, it would be manifest folly, as well as ingratitude, to neglect it. If both are concerned, to make your equal or inferior attend on you, to his own disadvantage, is pride and injustice.	16
Ignorance of forms cannot properly be styled ill manners; because forms are subject to frequent changes; and consequently, being not founded upon reason, are beneath a wise man’s regard. Besides, they vary in every country; and after a short period of time, very frequently in the same; so that a man who travels, must needs be at first a stranger to them in every court through which he passes; and perhaps at his return, as much a stranger in his own; and after all, they are easier to be remembered or forgotten than faces or names.	17
Indeed, among the many impertinences that superficial young men bring with them from abroad, this bigotry of forms is one of the principal, and more prominent than the rest; who look upon them not only as if they were matters capable of admitting of choice, but even as points of importance; and are therefore zealous on all occasions to introduce and propagate the new forms and fashions they have brought back with them. So that, usually speaking, the worst bred person in the company is a young traveller just returned from abroad.

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Swift Quotes

A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.

A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying... that he is wiser today than yesterday.

A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.

A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.

Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.

As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.

As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.

Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

Books, the children of the brain.

Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.

Don't set your wit against a child.

Every dog must have his day.

Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.

He was a bold man that first eat on oyster.

He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.

Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.

I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.

I've always believed no matter how many shots I miss, I'm going to make the next one.

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.

It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.

It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.

It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

May you live all the days of your life.

May you live every day of your life.

Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.

Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.

My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.

No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.

Observation is an old man's memory.

Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.

One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.

Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.

Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.

Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

Proper words in proper places make the true definiton of style.

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.

The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.

There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.

There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together; Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.

Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.

Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.

We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.

We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.

Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.

Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.

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A Modest Proposal

For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland, from Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick

By Jonathan Swift

Edited and annotated by Jack Lynch

Swift was Irish, and though he much preferred living in England, he resented British policies toward the Irish. In a letter to Pope of 1729, he wrote, "Imagine a nation the two-thirds of whose revenues are spent out of it, and who are not permitted to trade with the other third, and where the pride of the women will not suffer [allow] them to wear their own manufactures even where they excel what come from abroad: This is the true state of Ireland in a very few words." His support for Irish causes has made him a renowned figure in modern Ireland. The paragraph numbers have been added for this edition.

[1] It is a melancholly Object to those, who walk through this great Town, 1 or travel in the Country, when they see the Streets, the Roads, and Cabbin-Doors, crowded with Beggars of the female Sex, followed by three, four, or six Children, all in Rags, and importuning every Passenger for an Alms. These Mothers instead of being able to work for their honest livelyhood, are forced to employ all their time in Stroling, to beg Sustenance for their helpless Infants, who, as they grow up either turn Thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native Country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, 2 or sell themselves to the Barbadoes. 3

[2] I think it is agreed by all Parties, that this prodigious number of Children, in the Arms, or on the Backs, or at the heels of their Mothers, and frequently of their Fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the Kingdom, a very great additional grievance; and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these Children sound and useful Members of the common-wealth would deserve so well of the publick, as to have his Statue set up for a preserver of the Nation.

[3] But my Intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the Children of professed beggars, it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of Infants at a certain Age, who are born of Parents in effect as little able to support them, as those who demand our Charity in the Streets.

[4] As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many Years, upon this important Subject, and maturely weighed the several Schemes of other Projectors, 4 I have always found them grossly mistaken in their computation. It is true a Child, just dropt from it's Dam, 5 may be supported by her Milk, for a Solar year with little other Nourishment, at most not above the Value of two Shillings, which the Mother may certainly get, or the Value in Scraps, by her lawful Occupation of begging, and it is exactly at one year Old that I propose to provide for them, in such a manner, as, instead of being a Charge upon their Parents, or the Parish, 6 or wanting 7 Food and Raiment for the rest of their Lives, they shall, on the Contrary, contribute to the Feeding and partly to the Cloathing of many Thousands.

[5] There is likewise another great Advantage in my Scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary Abortions, and that horrid practice of Women murdering their Bastard Children, alas! too frequent among us, Sacrificing the poor innocent Babes, I doubt, 8 more to avoid the Expence, than the Shame, which would move Tears and Pity in the most Savage and inhuman breast.

[6] The number of Souls in this Kingdom being usually reckoned one Million and a half, Of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand Couple whose Wives are breeders, from which number I Substract thirty Thousand Couples, who are able to maintain their own Children, although I apprehend 9 there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the Kingdom, but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand Breeders. I again Subtract fifty Thousand for those Women who miscarry, or whose Children dye by accident, or disease within the Year. There only remain an hundred and twenty thousand Children of poor Parents annually born: The question therefore is, How this number shall be reared, and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present Situation of Affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed, for we can neither employ them in Handicraft, or Agriculture; we neither build Houses, (I mean in the Country) nor cultivate Land: 10 they can very seldom pick up a Livelyhood by Stealing until they arrive at six years Old, except where they are of towardly parts, 11 although, I confess they learn the Rudiments much earlier; during which time they can however be properly looked upon only as Probationers, as I have been informed by a principal Gentleman in the County of Cavan, who protested to me, that he never knew above one or two Instances under the Age of six, even in a part of the Kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that Art.

[7] I am assured by our Merchants, that a Boy or Girl, before twelve years Old, is no saleable Commodity, and even when they come to this Age, they will not yield above three Pounds, or three Pounds and half a Crown at most on the Exchange, which cannot turn to Account either to the Parents or the Kingdom, the Charge of Nutriments and Rags having been at least four times that Value.

[8] I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be lyable to the least Objection.

[9] I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy Child well Nursed is at a year Old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome Food, whether Stewed, Roasted, Baked, or Boyled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a Fricasie, or Ragoust. 12

[10] I do therefore humbly offer it to publick consideration, that of the hundred and twenty thousand Children, already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for Breed, whereof only one fourth part to be Males, which is more than we allow to Sheep, black Cattle, or Swine, and my reason is, that these Children are seldom the Fruits of Marriage, a Circumstance not much regarded by our Savages, therefore, one Male will be sufficient to serve four Females. That the remaining hundred thousand may at a year Old be offered in Sale to the persons of Quality, 13 and Fortune, through the Kingdom, always advising the Mother to let them Suck plentifully in the last Month, so as to render them Plump, and Fat for a good Table. A Child will make two Dishes at an Entertainment for Friends, and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind Quarter will make a reasonable Dish, and seasoned with a little Pepper or Salt will be very good Boiled on the fourth Day, especially in Winter.

[11] I have reckoned upon a Medium, that a Child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar Year if tollerably nursed encreaseth to 28 Pounds.

[12] I grant this food will be somewhat dear, 14 and therefore very proper for Landlords, 15 who, as they have already devoured most of the Parents, seem to have the best Title to the Children.

[13] Infant's flesh will be in Season throughout the Year, but more plentiful in March, and a little before and after; for we are told by a grave Author 16 an eminent French physitian, that Fish being a prolifick Dyet, there are more Children born in Roman Catholick Countries about nine Months after Lent, than at any other Season, therefore reckoning a Year after Lent, the Markets will be more glutted than usual, because the Number of Popish Infants, is at least three to one in this Kingdom, and therefore it will have one other Collateral advantage by lessening the Number of Papists among us.

[14] I have already computed the Charge of nursing a Beggars Child (in which list I reckon all Cottagers, Labourers, and four fifths of the Farmers) to be about two Shillings per Annum, Rags included; and I believe no Gentleman would repine to give Ten Shillings for the Carcass of a good fat Child, which, as I have said will make four Dishes of excellent Nutritive Meat, when he hath only some particular friend, or his own Family to Dine with him. Thus the Squire will learn to be a good Landlord, and grow popular among his Tenants, the Mother will have Eight Shillings neat profit, and be fit for Work till she produceth another Child.

[15] Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the Times require) may flay the Carcass; the Skin of which, Artificially 17 dressed, will make admirable Gloves for Ladies, and Summer Boots for fine Gentlemen.

[16] As to our City of Dublin, Shambles 18 may be appointed for this purpose, in the most convenient parts of it, and Butchers we may be assured will not be wanting, although I rather recommend buying the Children alive, and dressing them hot from the Knife, as we do roasting Pigs.

[17] A very worthy Person, a true Lover of his Country, and whose Virtues I highly esteem, was lately pleased, in discoursing on this matter, to offer a refinement upon my Scheme. He said, that many Gentlemen of this Kingdom, having of late destroyed their Deer, he conceived that the want of Venison might be well supplyed by the Bodies of young Lads and Maidens, not exceeding fourteen Years of Age, nor under twelve; so great a Number of both Sexes in every County being now ready to Starve, for want of Work and Service: And these to be disposed of by their Parents if alive, or otherwise by their nearest Relations. But with due deference to so excellent a friend, and so deserving a Patriot, I cannot be altogether in his Sentiments, for as to the Males, my American acquaintance assured me from frequent Experience, that their flesh was generally Tough and Lean, like that of our School-boys, by continual exercise, and their Taste disagreeable, and to Fatten them would not answer the Charge. Then as to the Females, it would, I think, with humble Submission, be a loss to the Publick, because they soon would become Breeders themselves: And besides it is not improbable that some scrupulous People might be apt to Censure such a Practice, (although indeed very unjustly) as a little bordering upon Cruelty, which, I confess, hath always been with me the strongest objection against any Project, how well soever intended.

[18] But in order to justify my friend, he confessed, that this expedient was put into his head by the famous Sallmanaazor, 19 a Native of the Island Formosa, who came from thence to London, above twenty Years ago, and in Conversation told my friend, that in his Country when any young Person happened to be put to Death, the Executioner sold the Carcass to Persons of Quality, as a prime Dainty, and that, in his Time, the Body of a plump Girl of fifteen, who was crucifyed for an attempt to Poison the Emperor, was sold to his Imperial Majesty's prime Minister of State, and other great Mandarins 20 of the Court, in Joints from the Gibbet, 21 at four hundred Crowns. Neither indeed can I deny, that if the same use were made of several plump young Girls in this Town, who, without one single Groat 22 to their Fortunes, cannot stir abroad without a Chair, 23 and appear at a Play-House, and Assemblies in Foreign fineries, which they never will Pay for; the Kingdom would not be the worse.

[19] Some Persons of a desponding Spirit are in great concern about that vast Number of poor People, who are aged, diseased, or maimed, and I have been desired to imploy my thoughts what Course may be taken, to ease the Nation of so grievous an Incumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known, that they are every Day dying, and rotting, by cold, and famine, and filth, and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the younger Labourers they are now in almost as hopeful a Condition. They cannot get Work, and consequently pine away from want of Nourishment, to a degree, that if at any time they are accidentally hired to common Labour, they have not strength to perform it, and thus the Country and themselves are happily delivered from the Evils to come.

[20] I have too long digressed, and therefore shall return to my subject. I think the advantages by the Proposal which I have made are obvious and many, as well as of the highest importance.

[21] For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the Number of Papists, with whom we are Yearly over-run, being the principal Breeders of the Nation, as well as our most dangerous Enemies, and who stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the Kingdom to the Pretender, hoping to take their Advantage by the absence of so many good Protestants, 24 who have chosen rather to leave their Country, than stay at home, and pay Tythes against their Conscience, to an idolatrous Episcopal Curate.

[22] Secondly, the poorer Tenants will have something valuable of their own, which by Law may be made lyable to Distress, 25 and help to pay their Landlord's Rent, their Corn and Cattle being already seazed, and Money a thing unknown.

[23] Thirdly, Whereas the Maintainance of an hundred thousand Children, from two Years old, and upwards, cannot be computed at less than Ten Shillings a piece per Annum, the Nation's Stock will be thereby encreased fifty thousand pounds per Annum, besides the profit of a new Dish, introduced to the Tables of all Gentlemen of Fortune in the Kingdom, who have any refinement in Taste, and the Money will circulate among our selves, the Goods being entirely of our own Growth and Manufacture.

[24] Fourthly, The constant Breeders, besides the gain of Eight Shillings Sterling per Annum, by the Sale of their Children, will be rid of the Charge of maintaining them after the first Year.

[25] Fifthly, this food would likewise bring great Custom to Taverns, where the Vintners will certainly be so prudent as to procure the best receipts 26 for dressing it to perfection, and consequently have their Houses frequented by all the fine Gentlemen, who justly value themselves upon their knowledge in good Eating, and a skillful Cook, who understands how to oblige his Guests will contrive to make it as expensive as they please.

[26] Sixthly, This would be a great Inducement to Marriage, which all wise Nations have either encouraged by Rewards, or enforced by Laws and Penalties. It would encrease the care and tenderness of Mothers towards their Children, when they were sure of a Settlement for Life, to the poor Babes, provided in some sort by the Publick to their Annual profit instead of Expence, we should soon see an honest Emulation among the married women, which of them could bring the fattest Child to the Market, Men would become as fond of their Wives, during the Time of their Pregnancy, as they are now of their Mares in Foal, their Cows in Calf, or Sows when they are ready to Farrow, nor offer to Beat or Kick them (as is too frequent a practice) for fear of a Miscarriage.

[27] Many other advantages might be enumerated: For Instance, the addition of some thousand Carcases in our exportation of Barreled Beef. The Propagation of Swines Flesh, and Improvement in the Art of making good Bacon, so much wanted among us by the great destruction of Pigs, too frequent at our Tables, which are no way comparable in Taste, or Magnificence to a well grown, fat Yearling Child, which Roasted whole will make a considerable Figure at a Lord Mayor's Feast, or any other Publick Entertainment. But this, and many others I omit being studious of Brevity.

[28] Supposing that one thousand Families in this City, would be constant Customers for Infants Flesh, besides others who might have it at Merry-meetings, particularly at Weddings and Christenings, I compute that Dublin would take off Annually about twenty thousand Carcases, and the rest of the Kingdom (where probably they will be Sold somewhat Cheaper) the remaining eighty thousand.

[29] I can think of no one Objection, that will possibly be raised against this Proposal, unless it should be urged, that the Number of People will be thereby much lessened in the Kingdom. This I freely own, 27 and it was indeed one Principal design in offering it to the World. I desire the Reader will observe, that I Calculate my Remedy for this one individual Kingdom of IRELAND, and for no other that ever was, is, or, I think, ever can be upon Earth. Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients: 28 Of taxing our Absentees at five Shillings a pound: 29 Of using neither Cloaths, nor household Furniture, except what is of our own Growth and Manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the Materials and Instruments that promote Foreign Luxury: Of curing the Expenciveness of Pride, Vanity, Idleness, and Gaming in our Women: Of introducing a Vein of Parcimony, Prudence and Temperance: Of learning to Love our Country, wherein we differ even from LAPLANDERS, and the Inhabitants of TOPINAMBOO: 30 Of quitting our Animosities, and Factions, nor Act any longer like the Jews, who were Murdering one another at the very moment their City was taken: 31 Of being a little Cautious not to Sell our Country and Consciences for nothing: Of teaching Landlords to have at least one degree of Mercy towards their Tenants. Lastly of putting a Spirit of Honesty, Industry and Skill into our Shop-keepers, who, if a Resolution could now be taken to Buy only our Native Goods, would immediately unite to Cheat and Exact 32 upon us in the Price, the Measure, and the Goodness, nor could ever yet be brought to make one fair Proposal of just dealing, though often and earnestly invited to it.

[30] Therefore I repeat, let no Man talk to me of these and the like Expedients, till he hath at least a Glimpse of Hope, that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into Practice.

[31] But as to my self, having been wearied out for many Years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of Success, I fortunately fell upon this Proposal, which as it is wholly new, so it hath something Solid and Real, of no Expence and little Trouble, full in our own Power, and whereby we can incur no Danger in disobliging England. For this kind of Commodity will not bear Exportation, the Flesh being of too tender a Consistance, to admit a long continuance in Salt, although perhaps I could name a Country, which would be glad to Eat up our whole Nation without it. 33

[32] After all I am not so violently bent upon my own Opinion, as to reject any Offer, proposed by wise Men, which shall be found equally Innocent, Cheap, Easy and Effectual. But before something of that kind shall be advanced in Contradiction to my Scheme, and offering a better, I desire the Author, or Authors will be pleased maturely to consider two points. First, As things now stand, how they will be able to find Food and Raiment for a hundred thousand useless Mouths and Backs. And Secondly, there being a round Million of Creatures in humane Figure, throughout this Kingdom, whose whole Subsistence put into a common Stock, would leave them in Debt two Millions of Pounds Sterling adding those, who are Beggars by Profession, to the Bulk of Farmers, Cottagers and Labourers with their Wives and Children, who are Beggars in Effect; I desire those Politicians, who dislike my Overture, and may perhaps be so bold to attempt an Answer, that they will first ask the Parents of these Mortals, whether they would not at this Day think it a great Happiness to have been sold for Food at a year Old, in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual Scene of Misfortunes, as they have since gone through, by the oppression of Landlords, the Impossibility of paying Rent without Money or Trade, the want of common Sustenance, with neither House nor Cloaths to cover them from Inclemencies of Weather, and the most inevitable Prospect of intailing the like, or greater Miseries upon their Breed for ever.

[33] I Profess in the sincerity of my Heart that I have not the least personal Interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary Work having no other Motive than the publick Good of my Country, by advancing our Trade, providing for Infants, relieving the Poor, and giving some Pleasure to the Rich. I have no Children, by which I can propose to get a single Penny; the youngest being nine Years old, and my Wife past Child-bearing.

Notes

1. Dublin.

2. The Pretender was the descendant of King James II of the House of Stuart, expelled from Britain in 1689. James and his descendants were Catholic, so they took refuge in Catholic countries.

3. Many poor Irish were forced to seek a living in the New World.

4. Projector, "One who forms schemes or designs" (Johnson).

5. Dam, "The mother: used of beasts, or other animals not human," or "A human mother: in contempt or detestation" (Johnson).

6. Parishes were responsible for the support of those unable to work.

7. Wanting, "lacking."

8. Doubt, "suspect" or "imagine."

9. Apprehend, "fear."

10. Britain imposed strict regulations on Irish agriculture.

11. Towardly parts, "ready abilities."

12. Fricasee, "A dish made by cutting chickens or other small things in pieces, and dressing them with strong sauce" (Johnson); ragout, "Meat stewed and highly seasoned" (Johnson).

13. Quality, "Rank; superiority of birth or station" (Johnson).

14. Dear, "expensive."

15. British landlords took much of the blame for Ireland's condition, and generally with good reason.

16. Swift's note: "Rabelais."

17. Artificially, "skillfully."

18. Shambles, "meat markets."

19. George Psalmanazar, an impostor who claimed to be from Formosa (modern Taiwan). His Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa (1704) described their religious practices: every year 18,000 young boys were sacrificed to the gods, and the parishioners ate their raw hearts.

20. Mandarin, "A Chinese nobleman or magistrate" (Johnson).

21. Gibbet, "A gallows; the post on which malefactors are hanged, or on which their carcases are exposed" (Johnson).

22. A groat is worth four pence; proverbially, any small amount.

23. Chair, "A vehicle born by men; a sedan" (Johnson).

24. Dissenters or Nonconformists, whose principles Swift rejected.

25. Distress, "arrest for debt."

26. Receipts, "[From recipe.] Prescription of ingredients for any composition" (Johnson).

27. Own, "admit."

28. These "expedients" are serious proposals, several of which Swift advocated in his other publications.

29. Five shillings a pound is a twenty-five percent tax.

30. Topinamboo, a district in Brazil.

31. Titus sacked the Second Temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

32. Exact, "impose."

33. Swift is making a coy reference to England.

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DYSTOPIA:

categorization

This is an attempt to categorize dystopia. It is a difficult task as dystopias often are complex
constructions and tend to borrow components from other dystopias. For instance, Blade Runner
can, to one degree or another, be said to contain elements from cyberpunk dystopias, tech noir
dystopias, overpopulation dystopias, capitalistic dystopias and so on and so forth. Consequently,
one depiction may occur in several different categories.

Totalitarian dystopias

As the name suggests, totalitarian societies utilize total control over and demand total commitment from the citizens, usually hiding behind a political ideology. Totalitarian states are, in most cases, ruled by party bureaucracies backed up by cadres of secret police and armed forces. The citizens are often closely monitored and rebellion is always punished mercilessly. Stories taking place in totalitarian dystopias usually depict the hopeless struggle of isolated dissidents. Totalitarian dystopias have, in general, dark psychological depths and strong political qualities. Hitler's Third Reich and Stalin's Soviet Union were real examples of such societies.

Examples: Nineteen Eighty-Four (novel; TV play; motion picture), We (novel), Fatherland (novel; TV movie).

Nineteen
Eighty-Four

Bureaucratic dystopias

Bureaucratic dystopias, or technocratic dystopias, are strictly regulated and hierarchical societies, thus related to totalitarian dystopias. Where totalitarian regimes strive to achieve complete control, bureaucratic regimes only strive to achieve absolute power to enforce laws. When totalitarian regimes tend to found their own laws, bureaucratic regimes tend to defend old laws. The law always seems to stand in conflict with rational thinking and human behaviour. To change status quo, even everyday procedures, is a long and difficult process for the citizens. It goes without saying such dystopias have strong satirical qualities and to some extent surreal qualities as well.

Examples: Brazil (motion picture), The Trial (novel; several TV plays; TV movie).

Brazil

Cyberpunk dystopias

A cyberpunk society is essentially a drastically exaggerated version of our own. Cyberpunk is a heterogeneous genre, but most dystopias have the following settings: the technological evolution has accelerated, environmental collapse is imminent, the boards of multi-national corporations are the real governments, urbanization has reached new levels and crime is beyond control. Important, but not necessary essential, concepts in cyberpunk are cybernetics, artificial enhancements of body and mind, and cyberspace, the global computer network and ultimate digital illusion. Cyberpunk stories are often street-wise and violent. It is debatably the most influential dystopian genre ever.

Examples: Neuromancer (novel; comic), Blade Runner (novel: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; motion picture; comic; computer game), Matrix (motion picture), Strange Days (motion picture).

Blade Runner

Tech noir dystopias

Tech noir is a hybrid between high-tech sci-fi and hard-boiled film noir. It is mainly a cinematic genre, more seldom literary, and as such difficult to demarcate and define, just like film noir. Tech noir is related to cyberpunk and often labeled as such, but tech noir dystopias usually have more psychological and existential depth. The atmosphere is more mesmerising, threatening, gloomy and melancholic than in average cyberpunk and the approach on technology, urbanisation and environment is much more complex. The spectacular contexts in tech noir dystopias are mainly backgrounds for intellectual experiments, in most cases extremely innovative and imaginative.

Examples: Blade Runner (novel: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; motion picture; comic; computer game), Dark City (motion picture), The City of Lost Children (motion picture), Brazil (motion picture).

Dark City

Off-world dystopias

This is not an established label, but is supposed to cover all dystopias located to outer space. In these stories, man's exploration of the universe did not become the happy adventure everyone expected. Colonization of other planets equals heavy industrialization and interstellar war between distant civilizations equals mechanized slaughter. Off-world dystopias are often closely related to cyberpunk dystopias or at least tend to borrow cyberpunk features. It goes without saying this is a heterogeneous genre and most alien horror stories technically belong here. Considering the almost unlimited possibilities, this genre is underdeveloped.

Examples: Alien (motion picture: part of series; novelization; computer game), The Forever War (novel), Outland (motion picture; novelization).

Aliens

Crime dystopias

Crime dystopias may have different settings. These societies have been infested with grave criminality and the authorities are about to lose control or have already lost it. This criminality may span from street crime to organized crime, more seldom governmental crime such as corruption and abuse of power. The authorities often use drastic and inhumane measures to fight the moral decay, perhaps out of desperation, perhaps out of necessity. The society is often in imminent danger of becoming totalitarian. Crime dystopias are not seldom political statements, usually of a radical and controversial nature.

Examples: A Clockwork Orange (novel; motion picture), The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse (novel; motion picture), The Escape from New York (motion picture: part of series).

A Clockwork
Orange

Overpopulation dystopias

The population of the world has grown dramatically and the limited resources of our planet are exhausted. Mankind is living in despair and society is in imminent danger of becoming or has already become social-darwinistic. There is an enormous wealth gap between the rich and the poor, and military and police are used to control the starving masses. There are many parallels between overpopulation dystopias and cyberpunk dystopias, especially when speaking of environment and urbanization. This kind of dystopia is rather rare, which is surprising: it may become an imminent problem in the near future.

Examples: Make Room! Make Room! (novel; motion picture: Soylent Green), Stand on Zanzibar (novel).

Soylent Green

Leisure dystopias

Leisure dystopias are probably best described as utopias gone wretched or failed paradise-engineering projects. In these societies, all problems have been solved, at least officially, and all citizens are living in wealth and happiness. Unfortunately, this is often achieved by suppressing individuality, art, religion, intellectualism and so on and so forth. Conditioning, consumption, designer-drugs, light entertainment and similar methods are widely used in order to combat existential misery. Conformity is encouraged as it makes it easier to control the population. The government's means of control are always of a very subtle nature and open repression is basically non-existent. Leisure dystopias are not very common nowadays, probably as Utopia is almost extinct as concept.

Examples: Brave New World (novel; TV movie), Demolition Man (motion picture), The Joy Makers (novel), Things to Come (motion picture).

Brave New World

Apocalyptic dystopias

Mankind, or sometimes a single nation or an ethnic group, are facing Armageddon, be it nuclear war, gigantic meteorites or nature disasters. The main focus may be political, but nevertheless may apocalyptic stories expose the dark psychological depths of mankind. The victims of the apocalypse may be egoistic, short-sighted, cynical and opportunistic, even in the very moment of annihilation. Actually, it is questionable if apocalyptic stories really are dystopian, but they usually have strong dystopian qualities. So-called techno thrillers, WWIII scenarios, would technically belong to this category.

Examples: Dr. Strangelove (novel: Red Alert / Two Hours to Doom; motion picture), Japan Sinks (novel; motion picture), Until the End of the World (motion picture).

Doctor
Strangelove

Post-apocalyptic dystopias

The cause is nuclear war, environmental collapse or deadly epidemics. The effect is usually anarchy and survival of the fittest, and not seldom a regression to feudalism as well. Many, although far from all, stories taking place in post-apocalyptic dystopias are simple action adventures with few, if any, depths. There are often obvious parallels to epic western movies as well as a grim sense of humour. A common plot includes a cynical lone-wolf anti-hero who reluctantly aids a small community which is trying to re-establish civilization and has to fight brutal and savage bands of raiders. Post-apocalyptic dystopias are often classified as cyberpunk, something I find questionable.

Examples: Road Warrior (motion picture: part of series), Waterworld (motion picture), The Omega Man (motion picture), Warday (novel), A Canticle for Leibowitz (novel).

Waterworld

Alien dystopias

Earth has become occupied or infiltrated by another species from some distant solar system. The take-over is not seldom of a stealthy kind, an obvious parallel to Cold War paranoia. In many alien dystopias, the Nazi rule in Europe during WWII is an evident source of inspiration: oppression and rebellion, resistance and collaboration. The occupiers almost always display a grave lack of empathy and tend to treat human beings as worthless slaves, primitive animals or even mindless prey. At their very best, alien dystopias deal with culture shocks in intelligent and imaginative ways.

Examples: V (TV series), The Tripods (TV series), Battlefield Earth (novel; motion picture), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (motion picture; two remakes).

The Tripods

Surreal dystopias

Those dystopias are perhaps better described as twisted dreamscapes. They are more or less dark, claustrophobic societies on the borderline of reality and tend to be diminished to suggestive backgrounds for personal transformations. The hero always lose orientation under the influence of e.g. paranoia, insanity, disease, drugs, perversion or violence. Those dreamscapes are perhaps not real dystopias, but they definitely have dystopian qualities and interesting psychological depths. Surreal dystopias often borrow aesthetic features from film noir and tech noir.

Examples: The Naked Lunch (novel; motion picture), Videodrome (novel; motion picture).

Videodrome

uchronian dystopias

Uchronian stories are alternative histories, so-called What if? stories. In most cases, uchronian dystopias deal with different outcomes of World War II and the Cold War. Besides being interesting intellectual experiments, they tend to explore nightmare societies in suggestive ways and emphasize the importance of fighting such systems. Uchronias often have an impressive accuracy when dealing with historical facts. This is basically the only dystopian category in which the stories explicitly may take place in the present or the past.

Examples: Fatherland (novel; TV movie), SS-GB (novel), USSA (novel), The Man in the High Castle (novel).

Fatherland

Machine dystopias

In machine dystopias, man has become just another production asset. The workers have to adapt to the machines, and not vice versa. Consequently, work is monotonous and dangerous. Efficiency is the goal and uniformity is the means. If there are any pleasures, they equal mindless consumption. Machine dystopias express fear of technology, not seldom in a naive manner, and it goes without saying they are more or less out-dated today. Nowadays, their artistic qualities are more interesting than their political. Nevertheless, they may say something about the conformity of modern civilization.

Examples: THX-1138 (motion picture), Metropolis (novel; motion picture).

THX-1138

Pseudo-utopian dystopias

Your utopia might be my dystopia and vice versa. Creators of utopias often have a very clear picture of their personal paradise and they dislike people who dare to criticize their dreamscapes. Many so-called utopias are strictly hierarchical, not to say militarized or even crypto-totalitarian. The ruling class is an intellectual elite with absolute power and dissidents are threatened with disdain or even cruelty. It goes without saying that external enemies are dealt with mercilessly, almost sadistically. Technically, most utopias belong to this category. In my opinion, there cannot be such a thing as a perfect society, as everyone has their own picture of Utopia. Let us all keep on dreaming, though.

Examples: Starship Troopers (novel; motion picture), Utopia (novel), A Modern Utopia (novel).

Starship
Troopers

Feminist dystopias

As the name suggests, feminist dystopias deal with oppression of women. The feminist dystopia is built on patriarchal structures and the role of woman has been diminished, e.g. to house-keeping and breeding. The society is often totalitarian or at least crypto-totalitarian, sometimes with more or less obvious parallels to fascism as represented in Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. To one degree or another, all dystopias are patriarchal, but in feminist dystopias it is explicit. This genre is debatably one of the most innovative dystopian genres nowadays, but have received a remarkably small amount of attention, all too small in my opinion.

Examples: The Handmaid's Tale (novel; motion picture), Walk to the End of the World (novel), Woman at the Edge of Time (novel), Bulldozer Rising (novel).

The Handmaid's Tale

Time-travel dystopias

In these stories, dark ages are waiting ahead: nuclear war, artificial intelligence take-over, environmental collapse, plagues etc. In most time-travel stories, agents are sent to our time in order to change history. As the name suggests, time-travel dystopias usually focus more on how certain events can change history, rather than the actual out-come. Consequently, future nightmare societies are often vaguely described and not seldom rather shallowly crafted in such stories. The purpose is to play with our fear of the future and emphasize that we can create our own future. It goes without saying they may be quite idealistic, sometimes even naive.

Examples: The Terminator (motion picture: part of series), 12 Monkeys (motion picture), Planet of the Apes (motion picture: part of series, remake), Millennium (novel; motion picture).

The Terminator

Capitalistic dystopias

The capitalistic dystopia does not differ too much from our own reality. Often, it is a brutal parody of modern civilization. Capitalistic dystopias are always merciless consumption societies: commerce is the first commandment and ethics is merely a marketing tool. Mega-corporations rule the world and there are no longer such things as integrity, dignity, compassion or faith. The protagonist seldom fights the system, simply because it is impossible: the oppressor is faceless and collective. Capitalistic dystopias basically equal cyberpunk dystopias nowadays.

Examples: The Space Merchants (novel), Robocop (motion picture: part of series; TV series), Neuromancer (novel; comic), Brave New World (novel; TV movie).

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Con – Anti-cloning Research

To those against it, cloning presents as much a moral problem as a technical problem. For them, cloning is an affront to religious sensibilities; it seems like "playing God," and interfering with the natural process. There are, of course, more logical objections, regarding susceptibility to disease, expense, and diversity. Others are worried about the abuses of cloning. Cloning appears to be a powerful force that can be exploited to produce horrendous results. Their basic objections to cloning research are outlined here.

Cloning may reduce genetic variability, Producing many clones runs the risk of creating a population that is entirely the same. This population would be susceptible to the same diseases, and one disease could devastate the entire population. One can easily picture humans being wiped out be a single virus, however, less drastic, but more probable events could occur from a lack of genetic diversity. For example, if a large percentage of an nation's cattle are identical clones, a virus, such as a particular strain of mad cow disease, could effect the entire population. The result could be catastrophic food shortages in that nation.

Cloning may cause people to settle for the best existing animals, not allowing for improvement of the species. In this way, cloning could potentially interfere with natural evolution.

Cloning is currently an expensive process. Cloning requires large amounts of money and biological expertise. Ian Wilmut and his associates required 277 tries before producing Dolly. A new cloning technique has recently been developed which is far more reliable. However, even this technique has 2-3% success rate.

There is a risk of disease transfer between transgenic animals and the animal from which the transgenes were derived. If an animal producing drugs in its milk becomes infected by a virus, the animal may transmit the virus to a patient using the drug.

Any research into human cloning would eventually need to be tested on human. The ability to clone humans may lead to the genetic tailoring of offspring. The heart of the cloning debate is concerned with the genetic manipulation of a human embryo before it begins development. It is conceivable that scientists could alter a baby's genetic code to give the individual a certain color of eyes or genetic resistance to certain diseases. This is viewed as inappropriate tampering with "Mother Nature" by many ethicists.

Because clones are derived from an existing adult cell, it has older genes. Will the clone's life expectancy be shorter because of this? Despite this concern, so far, all clones have appeared to be perfectly normal creatures.

A "genetic screening test" could be used to eliminate zygotes of a particular gender, without requiring a later abortion.

Cloning might be used to create a "perfect human," or one with above normal strength and sub-normal intelligence, a genetic underclass. Also, if cloning is perfected in humans, there would be no genetic need for men.

Cloning might have a detrimental effect on familial relationships. A child born from an adult DNA cloning of his father could be considered a delayed identical twin of one of his parents. It is unknown as to how a human might react if he or she knew he or she was an exact duplicate of an older individual.

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Pro – Cloning Supporters

Supporters of cloning feel that with the careful continuation of research, the technological benefits of cloning clearly outweigh the possible social consequences. In their minds, final products of cloning, like farm animals, and laboratory mice will not be the most important achievement. The applications of cloning they envision are not nightmarish and inhumane, but will improve the overall quality of science and life. Cloning will help to produce discoveries that will effect the study of genetics, cell development, human growth, and obstetrics. Human cloning is not the issue, it is merely a threat to the continuation of cloning research. Their arguments for such research are displayed here.

Cloning might produce a greater understanding of the cause of miscarriages, which might lead to a treatment to prevent spontaneous abortions. This would help women who can't bring a fetus to term. It might lead to an understanding of the way a morula (mass of cells developed from a blastula) attaches itself to the uterine wall. This might generate new and successful contraceptives.

Cloning experiments may add to the understanding of genetics and lead to the creation of animal organs that an be easily accepted by humans. This would supply limitless organs to those in need. The growth of the human morula is similar to the growth at which cancer cells propagate. If information derived from cloning research allows scientists to stop the division of the human ovum, a technique for terminating cancer may be found.

Cloning could also be used for parents who risk passing a defect to a child. A fertilized ovum could be cloned, and the duplicate tested for disease and disorder. If the clone was free from defects, then other would be as well. The latter could be implanted in the womb.

Damage to the nervous system could treated through cloning. Damaged adult nerve tissue does not regenerate on its own. However, stem cells might be able to repair the damaged tissue. Because of the large number of cells required, human embryo cloning would be required.

In in-vitro fertilization, a doctor often implants many fertilized ova into a woman's uterus and counts on one resulting in pregnancy. However, some women can only supply one egg. Through cloning, that egg could be divided into eight zygotes for implanting. The chances of pregnancy would be much greater.

Cloning would allow a women to have one set of identical twins instead of going through two pregnancies. The women may not want to disrupt her career, or would prefer to only have one pregnancy. With cloning it would be assured that they would be identical.

Cloning could provide spare parts. Fertilized ova could be cloned into several zygotes, one would be implanted and the others would be frozen for future use. In the event the child required a transplant, another zygote could be implanted, matured, and eventually contribute to the transplant. Some believe that if a parent wanted to produce talents in a child similar to his own, cloning using DNA from the cell of the adult may produce a child with the same traits. Many are skeptical about this possibility.

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Aldous Huxley: The Author and his Times - somaweb.org

Aldous Leonard Huxley was born on July 26, 1894, into a family that included some of the most distinguished members of that part of the English ruling class made up of the intellectual elite. Aldous' father was the son of Thomas Henry Huxley, a great biologist who helped develop the theory of evolution. His mother was the sister of Mrs. Humphrey Ward, the novelist; the niece of Matthew Arnold, the poet; and the granddaughter of Thomas Arnold, a famous educator and the real-life headmaster of Rugby School who became a character in the novel Tom Brown's Schooldays.

Undoubtedly, Huxley's heritage and upbringing had an effect on his work. Gerald Heard, a longtime friend, said that Huxley's ancestry "brought down on him a weight of intellectual authority and a momentum of moral obligations." Throughout Brave New World you can see evidence of an ambivalent attitude toward such authority assumed by a ruling class.

Like the England of his day, Huxley's Utopia possesses a rigid class structure, one even stronger than England's because it is biologically and chemically engineered and psychologically conditioned. And the members of Brave New World's ruling class certainly believe they possess the right to make everyone happy by denying them love and freedom.

Huxley's own experiences made him stand apart from the class into which he was born. Even as a small child he was considered different, showing an alertness, an intelligence, what his brother called a superiority. He was respected and loved--not hated--for these abilities, but he drew on that feeling of separateness in writing Brave New World. Bernard Marx and Helmholtz Watson, both members of the elite class, have problems because they're different from their peers. Huxley felt that heredity made each individual unique, and the uniqueness of the individual was essential to freedom. Like his family, and like the Alphas of Brave New World, Huxley felt a moral obligation--but it was the obligation to fight the idea that happiness could be achieved through class-instituted slavery of even the most benevolent kind.

Another event that marked Huxley was his mother's death from cancer when he was 14. This, he said later, gave him a sense of the transience of human happiness. Perhaps you can also see the influence of his loss in Brave New World. The Utopians go to great lengths to deny the unpleasantness of death, and to find perpetual happiness. But the cost is very great. By denying themselves unpleasant emotions they deny themselves deeply joyous ones as well. Their happiness can be continued endlessly by taking the drug soma by making love, or by playing Obstacle Golf, but this happiness is essentially shallow. Standing in contrast to the Utopians are the Savages on the Reservation in New Mexico: poor, dirty, subject to the ills of old age and painful death, but, Huxley seems to believe, blessed with a happiness that while still transient is deeper and more real than that enjoyed by the inhabitants of London and the rest of the World State.

When Huxley was 16 and a student at the prestigious school Eton, an eye illness made him nearly blind. He recovered enough vision to go on to Oxford University and graduate with honors, but not enough to fight in World War I, an important experience for many of his friends, or to do the scientific work he had dreamed of. Scientific ideas remained with him, however, and he used them in many of his books, particularly Brave New World. The idea of vision also remained important to him; his early novels contain scenes that seem ideal for motion pictures, and he later became a screenwriter.

He entered the literary world while he was at Oxford, meeting writers like Lytton Strachey and Bertrand Russell and becoming close friends with D. H. Lawrence, with whom you might think he had almost nothing in common.

Huxley published his first book, a collection of poems, in 1916. He married Maria Nys, a Belgian, in 1919. Their only child, Matthew Huxley, was born in 1920. The family divided their time between London and Europe, mostly Italy, in the 1920s, and traveled around the world in 1925 and 1926, seeing India and making a first visit to the United States.

Huxley liked the confidence, vitality, and "generous extravagance" he found in American life. But he wasn't so sure he liked the way vitality was expressed "in places of public amusement, in dancing and motoring... Nowhere, perhaps, is there so little conversation... It is all movement and noise, like the water gurgling out of a bath--down the waste. Yes, down the waste." Those thoughts of the actual world, from the book Jesting Pilate, were to color his picture of the perpetual happiness attempted in Brave New World.

His experiences in fascist Italy, where Benito Mussolini led an authoritarian government that fought against birth control in order to produce enough manpower for the next war, also provided materials for Huxley's dystopia, as did his reading of books critical of the Soviet Union.

Huxley wrote Brave New World in four months in 1931. It appeared three years after the publication of his best-seller, the novel Point Counter Point. During those three years, he had produced six books of stories, essays, poems, and plays, but nothing major. His biographer, Sybille Bedford, says, "It was time to produce some full-length fiction--he still felt like holding back from another straight novel--juggling in fiction form with the scientific possibilities of the future might be a new line."

Because Brave New World describes a dystopia, it is often compared with George Orwell's 1984, another novel you may want to read, which also describes a possible horrible world of the future. The world of 1984 is one of tyranny, terror, and perpetual warfare. Orwell wrote it in 1948, shortly after the Allies had defeated Nazi Germany in World War II and just as the West was discovering the full dimensions of the evils of Soviet totalitarianism.

It's important to remember that Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931, before Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and before Joseph Stalin started the purges that killed millions of people in the Soviet Union. He therefore had no immediate real-life reason to make tyranny and terror major elements of his story. In 1958 Huxley himself said, "The future dictatorship of my imaginary world was a good deal less brutal than the future dictatorship so brilliantly portrayed by Orwell."

In 1937, the Huxleys came to the United States; in 1938 they went to Hollywood, where he became a screenwriter (among his films was an adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, which starred the young Laurence Olivier). He remained for most of his life in California, and one of his novels caricatures what he saw as the strange life there: After Many a Summer Dies the Swan. In it the tycoon Jo Stoyte tries to achieve immortality through scientific experimentation, even if it means giving up humanity and returning to the completely animal state--an echo of Brave New World.

In 1946 Huxley wrote a Foreword to Brave New World in which he said he no longer wanted to make social sanity an impossibility, as he had in the novel. Though World War II had caused the deaths of some 20 million inhabitants of the Soviet Union, six million Jews, and millions of others, and the newly developed atomic bomb held the threat of even more extensive destruction, Huxley had become convinced that while still "rather rare," sanity could be achieved and said that he would like to see more of it. In the same year, he published The Perennial Philosophy, an anthology of texts with his own commentaries on mystical and religious approaches to a sane life in a sane society.

He also worried about the dangers that threatened sanity. In 1958, he published Brave New World Revisited, a set of essays on real-life problems and ideas you'll find in the novel--overpopulation, overorganization, and psychological techniques from salesmanship to hypnopaedia, or sleep-teaching. They're all tools that a government can abuse to deprive people of freedom, an abuse that Huxley wanted people to fight. If you want to further relate his bad new world to the real world, read Brave New World Revisited.

In the 1950s Huxley became famous for his interest in psychedelic or mind-expanding drugs like mescaline and LSD, which he apparently took a dozen times over ten years. Sybille Bedford says he was looking for a drug that would allow an escape from the self and that if taken with caution would be physically and socially harmless.

He put his beliefs in such a drug and in sanity into several books. Two, based on his experiences taking mescaline under supervision, were nonfiction: Doors of Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1956). Some readers have read those books as encouragements to experiment freely with drugs, but Huxley warned of the dangers of such experiments in an appendix he wrote to The Devils of Loudun (1952), a psychological study of an episode in French history.

Another work centering on drugs and sanity was Island (1962), a novel that required 20 years of thought and five years of writing. Among other things, Island was an antidote to Brave New World, a good Utopia. Huxley deplored the drug he called soma in Brave New World--half tranquilizer, half intoxicant--which produces an artificial happiness that makes people content with their lack of freedom. He approved of the perfected version of LSD that the people of Island use in a religious way.

Huxley produced 47 books in his long career as a writer. The English critic Anthony Burgess has said that he equipped the novel with a brain. Other critics objected that he was a better essayist than novelist precisely because he cared more about his ideas than about plot or characters, and his novels' ideas often get in the way of the story.

But Huxley's emphasis on ideas and his skin as an essayist cannot hide one important fact: The books he wrote that are most read and best remembered today are all novels--Crome Yellow, Antic Hay, and Point Counter Point from the 1920s, Brave New World and After Many a Summer Dies the Swan from the 1930s. In 1959 the American Academy of Arts and Letters gave him the Award of Merit for the Novel, a prize given every five years; earlier recipients had been Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann, and Theodore Dreiser.

The range of Huxley's interests can be seen from his note that his "preliminary research" for Island included "Greek history, Polynesian anthropology, translations from Sanskrit and Chinese of Buddhist texts, scientific papers on pharmacology, neurophysiology, psychology and education, together with novels, poems, critical essays, travel books, political commentaries and conversations with all kinds of people, from philosophers to actresses, from patients in mental hospitals to tycoons in Rolls-Royces...." He used similar, though probably fewer, sources for Brave New World.

This list gives you some perspective on the wide range of ideas that Huxley studied. He also wrote an early essay on ecology that helped inspire today's environmental movement. And he was a pacifist. This belief prevented him from becoming an American citizen because he would not say his pacifism was a matter of his religion, which might have made him an acceptable conscientious objector.

Huxley remained nearly blind all his life. Maria Huxley died in 1955, and Huxley married Laura Archera a year later. He died November 22, 1963, the same day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. He was cremated, and his ashes were buried in his parents' grave in England.

A large part of the above is © Copyright 1985 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc.

copyright somaweb.org 1995-2010

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“Cockroach” by Ann Sexton

Roach, foulest
                                    of creatures,

who attacks with yellow teeth

and an army of cousins big as shoes,

you are lumps
                                    of coal that are mechanized

and when I turn on the light you scuttle

into the corners and there is this
                                    hiss upon the land.

Yet I know you are only the common angel

turned into, by way of enchantment, the ugliest.

Your
                                    uncle was made into an apple.

Your aunt was made into a Siamese cat,

all the rest were made into butterflies

but
                                    because you lied to God outrightly--

told him that all things on earth were in order--

He turned his wrath
                                    upon you and said,

I will make you the most loathsome,

I will make you into God's lie,

and never
                                    will a little girl fondle you

or hold your dark wings cupped in her palm.

But
                                    that was not true. Once in New Orleans

with a group of students a roach fled across

the floor and I shrieked
                                    and she picked it up

in her hands and held it from my fear for one hour.

And held it like a diamond ring
                                    that should not escape.

These days even the devil is getting overturned

and held up to the light like a glass of water.

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George Orwell says,
"Let the Meaning Choose the Word"

excerpts from George Orwell "Politics and the English Language", in Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays (1946) Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., 1974.

Four Bad Habits

"...This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose. . . .Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose-construction is habitually dodged:

Dying Metaphors.

A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically 'dead' (e.g. 'iron resolution') has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness.

But in between those two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.

Examples are:
Ring the changes on..., toe the line, ride roughshod over, hotbed.
Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning, and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what [s/he] is saying.

Operators or Verbal False Limbs.

These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry.

Characteristic phrases are
render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc., etc.

The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as
break, stop, spoil, mend, kill,
a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as
prove, serve, form, play, render.

In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining).
The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formation, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced with such phrases as
with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that;
and the ends of sentences are saved from anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as
greatly to be desired, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion and so on and so forth.

Pretentious Diction.

Words like
phenomenon, element, objective, categorical, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate are used to dress up simple statements and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgments.

Adjectives like
epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable,veritable are used to dignify the sordid processes of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic color, its characteristic words being:
realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion.

Foreign words and phrases such as
cul de sac, mutatis mutandis, status quo, weltanschauung,
are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g., [et al.] and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in English.

Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like
expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous
and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite numbers....

It is often easier to make up words. . .(deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, nonfragmentatory, and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.

Meaningless Words.

In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.

Words like
romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality,
as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, 'The outstanding feature of [x]'s work is its living quality', while another writes 'The immediately striking thing about [x]'s work is its peculiar deadness,' the reader accepts this as a simple difference of opinion. If words like black and white were involved, [s/he] would see at once that language was being used in an improper way.

Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable'. The words
democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice,
have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: Consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the [people who use them have their private definitions, but allow their hearers to think they] mean something quite different.

Statements like
[x] was a true patriot, The [national] press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution,
are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are
class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality....

Orwell's Six Rules

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

....If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase...into the dustbin where it belongs."

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The "Not Me" Myth: Orwell and the Mind
by Margaret Thaler Singer

Orwell, as others before him such as Defoe, Zamyatin, Huxley and Jack London, wrote about the "negative utopias." These were places in which man's most central capacities for reasoning creatively, scientifically and compassionately were gradually curbed and eventually stifled. Not only in "1984" but in his essay on Politics and the English Language, Orwell emphasized the power of words. Words represent thoughts and without the capability to express those thoughts, people lost access to them.

`Writers before Orwell prophesied centralized governments using torture, drugs and mysterious esoteric techniques as the feared methods by which man might be controlled. Orwell's genius was in sensing that combinations of social and psychological techniques are easier, more effective, and cheaper than the gun-at-the-head method of coercion. Social and psychological persuasion are also less likely to attract attention and thus are unlikely to mobilize opposition early and easily from those being manipulated. Orwell reasoned that if a government could control all media and communication, meanwhile forcing citizens to speak in a politically-controlled jargon, this would blunt independent thinking. If thought could be controlled, then rebellious actions against a regime could be prevented.

As 1984 begins, various totalitarian governments control and censor the media and squelch dissenting individuals. Perhaps more ominously and subtly here and elsewhere in the world, there are mini-versions of Orwell's Big Brother, Newspeak and Thought Police. Since the early 1970's there has been a burgeoning not of governments, but of independent entrepreneurial groups going into the mind manipulation and personality-change business. Myriads of faddist, cultists, quacks and "new age" and "new-movement" groups have emerged using Orwellian mind manipulation techniques. The groups recruit the naive, the unaffiliated, the trusting and the altruistic. They promise intellectual, spiritual and self-actualization utopias whereas the pied pipers of the past promised primarily social and political new worlds. The New Age pied pipers offer pathways to development, enlightenment and egalitarianism. Many later subject their followers to mind-numbing treatments that block thinking and subjugate free will in a context of a strictly enforced hierarchy.

Just as most soldiers believe bullets will hit only others, not themselves, most citizens like to think that their own minds and thought processes are invulnerable. " Other people can be manipulated, but not me," they declare. People like to think that their opinions, values and ideas are inviolate and totally self-regulated. They may admit grudgingly that they are influenced slightly by advertising. Beyond that, they want to preserve a myth in which other persons are weak-minded and easily influenced, but they are strong-minded. People cherish a fantasy that manipulators confront, browbeat and argue people into doing their bidding. They envision Big Brother coming in storm-trooper boots, holding guns to heads and forcing persons to change their beliefs, alter their personalities, and accept new ideologies. Orwell drew on the wisdom of the ages -- most manipulation is subtle and covert. Orwell envisioned the evolution of an insidious, but successful mind and opinion manipulator. He would appear as a smiling, seemingly beneficent Big Brother. But instead of one Big Brother, we see hordes of Big Brothers in the world today.

Orwell's predictions have not totally, and perhaps may never completely occur because of the wondrous properties of the human mind when it remains free to reason. But his ideas serve as warnings of the extent to which people's thinking can be influenced.

The myth of mind invulnerability needs to be examined over and over to prevent Orwell's 1984 world from happening. In just the past half-century, the world has seen numerous examples of the extent to which people can be influenced. A number of these have been California-based phenomena. In the 1930's we saw the Russian purge trials, in the late 1940's the world witnessed the Chinese Thought Reform programs change the beliefs and behavior of the largest nation in the world. The 1950's brought the Korean War in which North Korea's intensive indoctrination of United Nations prisoners of war showed the extent to which captors would go in an attempt to win converts to their political cause. Later in the same decade Cardinal Mindszenty, the head of the Catholic Church in Hungary, and a man of tremendous personal forcefulness, strength of convictions, and faith in God, ended up being so manipulated and processed by his Russian captors that he -- as had the purge trial victims of the 1930's-- both falsely confessed and falsely accused his colleagues. As he later looked back on the manipulation and processing done to him, he wrote in his memoirs, "Without being aware of what was happening, I had become another person." These extremes of social and psychological manipulations of thought and conduct are often disregarded by Americans because the events occurred for away and could be dismissed as merely foreign propaganda, and political acts. The reasoning was based on the "not me myth" -- not in our land could such happen. Then we had to begin looking at certain events that were occurring the California and see that extremes of influence and manipulation were possible here. Charles Manson manipulated a band of middle-class youths into believing his mad versions of "Helter Skelter" and under his influence they carried out multiple vicious murders. Later Patricia Hearst, a kidnap victim, was psychologically and otherwise abused by a rag-tag group of Bay Area revolutionaries. They used Orwellian mind manipulations as well as gun-at-the-head methods to coerce her compliance. Then in 1978, Jim Jones manipulated 912 persons into history's largest mass murder-suicide phenomenon. Since him the world has seen other cult leaders such as David Koresh in Texas, Luc Jouret with followers in Canada, France and Switzerland lead their followers to fiery deaths. Hundreds of other cult leaders have gathered far more followers than Jones by promising new psychological and spiritual utopias. They have succeeded by combining various ages-old psychological and social persuasion techniques in an atmosphere os Madison Avenue soft-sell approaches. Because most of the followers have been youthful or poor, little attention and credence has been given to reports from ex-members, families and friends who report the effects of the techniques of manipulation used by the groups. Representative Leo J. Ryan understood the manipulation phenomena people were describing to him and he lost his life in a Guyanese jungle investigating how Jim Jones "bent minds."

Were George Orwell alive, he might be intrigued with the variety of situations in which mind-bending and thought manipulation techniques are applied today. His genius centered on seeing how language, not physical force would be used to manipulate minds. In fact the growing evidence in the behavioral sciences is that a smiling Big Brother has greater power to influence thought and decision-making that a visibly threatening person. As Orwell's last words in his prophetic book stated: "He loved Big Brother."

Margaret Thaler Singer, Ph.D. Emeritus Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Psychology
University of California, Berkeley

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Excerpt's from V. J. Jerome's The Negro in Hollywood Films (1950)

About the Author

The text of this booklet is an expansion of a lecture, "The Negro in Hollywood Films," delivered at a public forum held under the auspices of the Marxist cultural magazine, Masses & Mainstream, at the Hotel Capitol, New York, on February 3, 1950.

The lecture, which dealt with fundamental and theoretical aspects of the film medium and the Negro question, and which projected a rounded program for uniting Negro and white Americans in the fight against chauvinism in the film and other cultural areas, was received with enthusiasm by the audience, and its publication urged upon the sponsors of the meeting.

The author, V. J. Jerome, is editor of Political Affairs, leading journal of Marxist thought and opinion in the United States, and also chairman of the Communist Party's National Cultural Commission. He is the author of several books and pamphlets, including Social-Democracy and the War, War and the Intellectuals, The Treatment of Defeated Germany, and, most recently, Culture In a Changing World, which has been translated in a number of European countries.

The Underlying Strategy

The treatment of Negro themes and characters by Hollywood during the past fifty years has borne a clear relationship to the concrete political program of monopoly capital in each successive period. Each phase of Hollywood policy in this regard must be considered in the frame of reference of the particular stage of the Negro people's movement, and of its alliance with the American working class.

While making certain concessions on the screen, designed to "adjust" to the Negro people's forward movement, the controlling interests have sought tenaciously to retain the clichés and discriminations of the past in one form or another. These concessions, being tactical in character, have always been utilized by monopoly capital with a view to furthering and strengthening its basic strategy. The objective of that strategy is to perpetuate the odious myth of "white supremacy" in order to hold back the developing labor-Negro alliance for the common struggle against fascism and imperialist war; to weaken the fight of the trade unions and white progressives for a Fair Employment Practices Commission bill, for the abolition of the poll tax, and for the outlawry of lynching; to prevent the organization and the full integration of the Negro workers into the trade unions, in order to hamper the unification of the white and Negro workers in a powerful American labor movement. It is the objective of that strategy, at all times, to undermine the movement of the Negro people and to prevent it from developing its full force, and to keep the Negro people from understanding the true basis and nature of their oppression. The objective is to keep them from understanding that the lynch-law and Jim-Crow discrimination and segregation are inspired by Wall Street and Southern landlord reaction.

The objective is, furthermore, to keep from the Negro people the scientific teaching of the Communist Party that their oppression is national in essence, and that their struggle is fundamentally a struggle for national liberation.

Finally, it is the objective of that strategy to weaken the ties of the Negro people with the white workers and other popular allies and thereby to retard the general working-class struggle for emancipation from capitalism. It is the aim of that strategy to isolate the Negro people's movement and rob it of self-confidence, thus to prevent the Negro people from taking the anti-imperialist road to national liberation.

Roots of Hollywood's Racism

The fact is that the imperialist credo of chauvinist nationalism and "white supremacy" dates back to the very origin of commercial film making in the United States. It is no mere chance that the very first dramatic film, which was shown in 1898, the year in which American imperialism, fully emerging, announced its "Manifest Destiny" with the launching of the robber war to wrest colonies from Spain, bore the title Tearing Down the Spanish Flag. Not less significant is the fact that in 1901--barely two years after announcement of the "Open Door" policy for the spoliation of China--the public was subjected to the racist film The Boxer Massacres in Pekin, designed to "prove" that the anti-imperialist struggle of the Chinese people constituted a "yellow peril" to "white civilization." Street Scene in Pekin, released the same year, portrayed British police in front of their Legation breaking up a demonstration of Chinese "unruly citizens" (Edison Catalogue, 1901).

The imperialist mythology of the Anglo-Saxon super-type was methodically cultivated in a variety of motion pictures, of which Fights of Nations, released in 1905, was perhaps the most viciously chauvinist. In that picture the Negro was caricatured as a "razor-thrower," the Jew as a "briber," the Mexican as a "treacherous" fellow, the Spaniard as a "foppish lover," the Irishman as a "drunkard," while in the final tableau the United States was presented as the bringer of peace to all the nations. As a contemporary trade publication described it: "The scene is magnificently decorated with emblems of all nations, the American eagle surmounting them. In harmony, peace and good will the characters of the different nations appear, making it an allegorical representation of "Peace," with the United States presiding at a congress of Powers" (The Moving Picture World March 9, 1907, as quoted by Louis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film, New York, 1939, p. 75). How prophetic of the day when this imperial eagle would seek to commandeer the United Nations into line for atomic "Peace"!

The policy of setting native against foreign-born, white against Negro, non-Jew against Jew, of dividing all in order to conquer all, but with the special, racist design to keep the Negro people upon the bottom rung of the ladder--that has been the studied policy of the rulers of this land. In this service they have methodically used the film medium.

The economics and politics of "white supremacy" were reflected in film after film that maligned, ridiculed, and disparaged the Negro people. Not only was Negro life ignored, not only were the struggles and aspirations of the Negro people undocumented, but such characterizations of Negroes as were given were the vilest caricatures, the most hideous stereotypes, designed to portray the Negro as moronic, clownish, menial, and sub-human. One need only bear in mind such characteristic titles as Rastus in Zululand and How Rastus Got His Turkey, which were made about 1910; the equally insulting Sambo series, which were turned out between 1909 and 1911; and the above-described Fights of Nations. To that high level of capitalist culture belonged also the series of shameful racist screen "comedies of errors," typified by The Masher (1907) and The Dark Romance of a Tobacco Can (1911), in which a man in romantic pursuit of a woman discovers the object of his quest to be a Negro woman. With such impudence was the chauvinist "morality" presented!

The ruling class, be it remembered, had long before the advent of the cinema betrayed the Negro people in the South to the counter-revolutionary plantation oligarchy. The Hayes-Tilden perfidy of 1876 had sealed the restoration to power of the Bourbons in the post-Reconstruction state governments of the South. In the opening years of the century, with the newly emerged epoch of imperialism marked by "reaction all along the line," the completion of the systematic disfranchisement and segregation of the Negro in the South was carried out in flagrant violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Colossal fraud, terror, lynch-law, and the Ku Klux Klan ruled the South to keep the Negro in "his place." The "white supremacy" stratagem served the Southern plantation feudalists and the controlling finance capitalists of Wall Street as an ideological mainstay of their white ruling-class oppression. Wall Street's Manifest Destiny ideology, first projected to rationalize the brutal oppression of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and Cuba, and in its latter-day form of the "American Century" serving to conceal designs for global conquest, found expression at home in the white chauvinist ideology used as a weapon to oppress the Negro people. This ideology increasingly permeated the bourgeois cultural field in all areas. The "white superiority" cult enforced the misshaping of American history and social science as a whole to a Bourbon bias.

Toward the opening of the second decade of the century--roughly from 1910 until the outbreak of World War I--a new trend came into evidence in the treatment of the Negro on the screen, side by side with the continued slap-stick, low comedy films of the past. The new trend was the Uncle Tom ideology.

To understand this turn, we need to see the political and social background of the United States during the years immediately preceding World War I.

It was a period of "popular distemper" and mass stirrings, brought to a head by the severe economic crisis of 1907. It was a time of strong anti-trust currents among all sections of the people, of agarian discontent, of mass wrath against the spoils system and against corruption in administration, Anti-militarist sentiments pervaded the country; everywhere demands rose for the outlawing of war. The woman suffrage movement was gaining momentum, together with the struggle for equal rights for working women.

It was a decade of significant advances in trade-union organization and of bitter strike struggles. Those were the years, too, of the growth of the Socialist Party and of mass socialist sentiment, which was registered, in the Presidential elections of 1912, in a vote of 900,000 for Eugene Debs. Within the Socialist Party a tide of struggle had set in, marking the rising challenge of the Left-moving proletarian rank and file to the petty-bourgeois opportunist leadership. The great defense movement of 1906-07 in behalf of the framed-up leaders of the Western Federation of Miners, Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone, which forced their acquittal, further evidenced the temper of the workers. Thus, President Theodore Roosevelt wrote in 1906 to a leading senator: "The labor men are very ugly and no one can tell how far such discontent will spread."

To stay "this rising tide of discontent," the bourgeoisie, by a division of labor, both intensified its exploitation of the masses and assumed the reformist mask. This was evidenced especially, during the 1912 election, in Roosevelt's demagogic attempt to capture the popular vote with his "Bull Moose" offshoot of the Republican Party. As in the simple binary fission of the one-celled amoeba, science could reveal no basic organic difference between the "Grand" Old Party and the Rough-Riding "Progressives." Capital trotted out its most consummate hypocrite in the Messiah-tongued Woodrow Wilson, whose "New Freedom" purporting to blow taps over the trusts, proved to be a proclamation of unlimited license for corporate plunder.

These developments found their reflections in the film--basically and predominantly carrying the message of reaction, but also expressing to a very minor degree the militancy of the people’s struggles.

In those years immediately preceding World War I, there emerged a series of anti-trust films, and a number more or less sympathetic to labor. The Power of Labor (1908) showed industrial workers on strike carrying their struggle to victory. The Egg Trust (1910) served to expose profiteering in food. Tim Mahoney, the Scab (1911) dealt with the shame of a worker who betrayed his union brothers. Another film with working-class sympathies was Locked Out (1911). Notable in this series was the screen version of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (1914).

The period of mass ferment before World War I involved also the continuing struggles of the Negro people, marking the beginnings of the present-day Negro liberation movement. These struggles inspired to action a section of Negro middle-class intellectuals, advanced in thinking and fired with zeal for the freedom of their people. Under the leadership of W. E. B. Du Bois, then a young professor at Atlanta University, there sprang into being in 1905 the militant Niagara movement. Its birth was a Declaration of Independence challenging the dominance of the Booker T. Washington ideology of accommodation and acquiescence to the white ruling class, of dependence on the good graces of the white bourgeoisie for "improvement" of the Negro people's "lot." The Niagara organization made clear its stand, in the ringing declaration of its spokesmen: "We claim for ourselves every right that belongs to a free-born American, civil and social, and until we get these rights we shall never cease to protest and assail the ears of America with the stories of its shameful deeds towards us."

Although the Niagara movement was short-lived, its effect on the white ruling class was unmistakable. Recognizing the growing ferment among the Negro intellectuals, the capitalist masters of America worked assiduously to "take over" the leadership of the emerging movement of the Negro people. To this end, they sought to impose on the movement a deadening "patronage," which could only have the effect of retarding a militant movement of the Negro people, led by Negroes and consciously, directed toward national liberation.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People appeared in 1910 and reflected in its origins both that militancy and that patronage. The former was shown in the fact that nearly the entire membership of the Niagara Movement merged with the N.A.A.C.P.; the latter in the fact that the new organization's entire official leadership, with the lone exception of Dr. Du Bois, was composed of whites. As Harry Haywood remarks in his Negro Liberation, ". . . with the launching of the N.A.A.C.P., a new pattern in 'race' leadership was set. It was the pattern of white ruling-class paternalism which, as time went on, was to cast an ever-deepening shadow over the developing Negro liberation movement, throttling its self-assertiveness and its independent imitative, placing before it limited objectives and dulling the sharp edge of the sword of Negro protest" (Harry Haywood, Negro Liberation, New York, 1948, p. 181.).

In the face of these developments in the political sphere, the screen portrayal of the Negro could not continue solely on the buffoon level of the Rastus and Sambo films. Hollywood continued, and even extended, its depiction of the Negro as mentally "inferior," continued his relegation to slap-stick roles. Yet, simultaneously, the times compelled something of a tactical departure from the old stereotype. Thus, there emerged in a number of films of that period a "sympathetic" Negro type--the classic Uncle Tom.

The Uncle Tom theme found expression in such films as For Massa's Sake (1911), The Debt (1912), and In Slavery Days (1913). The first of these shows a "faithful" slave who tries self-sacrificingly to discharge his white master's gambling debts by offering himself for sale.

Uncle Tom's Cabin itself appeared during these years in three film versions, with distorted emphasis upon the theme of Uncle Tom's devotion to little Eva, thus eliminating Harriet Beecher Stowe's central indictment of slavery.

It was also in this period, during 1911, that The Battle was directed by D. W. Griffith, who, four years later, was to make The Birth of a Nation. The Battle set a precedent for all future Hollywood pictures dealing with the Civil War. It romanticized the Old South and the "sweet slavery, days." It crystallized for film audiences all the high-flown, hypocritical legends of the slavocracy--the "generous" colonels, the fine, indulgent masters, the "happy, carefree state" of the plantation slaves portrayed side by side with their "brutishness."

What was the significance of all these pictures? Essentially, they represented a shift in tactic to counteract the new liberation movement of the Negro people, as well as to hold back Negro and white unity. The main stereotypes of the Negro--"primitiveness," "childishness," and "buffoonery"--could no longer serve as sole rationalizations of "white supremacy." Uncle Tom was needed.

The tactic was designed to erect a barrier against the rising mood of struggle for Negro rights. Servile acceptance of inequality, collaboration with imperialism, nostalgic beatification of slavery--this has been the thesis of films dealing with the slave South and the Civil War during the forty years since. It implies also a slanderous belittlement of the North's role in the Civil War, which itself has come to be treated as a "mistake" and its result as an "illegitimate" victory.

During that time, too, to make the tactic more effective, Hollywood began to release its series of "white supremacy" films dealing with the "curse of mixed-blood." Those racist melodramas, typified by The Octoroon (1913), clearly were designed to stamp the Negro people as "social pariahs" for whom there was no liberation and with whom there was no association. The "mission" of such films was to accomplish, under new conditions, in the "serious" and "tragic" way, what the utterly slap-stick, low-comedy pictures had been manufactured to do in their way.

But as the war drums began to beat, this tactic was found wanting. Hollywood made a decisive turn with the outbreak of imperialist World War I.

Woodrow Wilson's call in August, 1914, upon Americans to be "impartial in thought as well as in action" was but the opening note in that ascending scale of monstrous demagogy which served the re-election of He-kept-us-out-of-war Wilson--five months before he plunged us into war.

Involvement of the United States in the war was plotted from the first by the dominant circles of Wall Street imperialism. The ominous signs were present in the increasing direction of United States trade to the side of the Allied Powers, beginning with 1915; in the functioning of the House of Morgan since mid-1915 as central purchasing agent for the Allies; and in Washington's "benevolent neutrality" toward Britain's illegal blockade of United States shipping, in contrast to the stern notes addressed to Germany against her blockade.

War preparations demanded charging the atmosphere with the ideologies of jingoism, chauvinism, racism, and brutality. Wall Street's plans for empire demanded the glorification of the white American "super-race." On the home scene this meant intensified attacks upon the Negro people. The flames of hatred were kindled against the Negro people in line with the policy of visiting the war burden upon the Negro and white toiling masses as a whole. To cope with the mass antiwar sentiment which prevailed over the land, it was necessary to undermine the markedly developing Negro and white alliance. The anticipated war production, which would necessarily absorb many Negro workers into industries, had to be guaranteed against the solidarity of Negro workers with white workers. With the cessation of the influx of cheap foreign labor consequent upon the outbreak of the war in Europe, Northern manufacturers had begun to stimulate the Northward migration of Negroes from the South. Even before the incentive of jobs in the North, that migration had started, as an escape from the unbearable conditions in the South. "Justifications" had to be prepared for residential segregation of Negroes, for the Jim-Crowing of Negro soldiers in the impending war, for the shameless overwork imposed upon uniformed Negro "labor battalions" in European ports and supply centers, and in general for the increased national oppression of the Negro people.

Thus, we read in Du Bois' autobiographical account of that period:

With the accession of Woodrow Wilson to the presidency in 1913 there opened for the American Negro a period lasting through and long after the World War and culminating in 1919, which was an extraordinary test for their courage and a time of cruelty, discrimination and wholesale murder. ( W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn, New York, 1940, p. 235.)

It was in 1915 that Hollywood, in keeping with its main strategy, produced The Birth of a Nation, which Wilson praised in the words: "It is like writing history with lightning."

It is highly significant that Hollywood's first "superspectacle," the longest and costliest film produced to that date, should have been a lying extravaganza glorifying slavery and vilifying the Negro people!

If, prior to that, the Negro had been stereotyped as clown or Uncle Tom, he was now disfigured as "beast." The foulness of capitalist "culture" has never been more glaringly revealed. By viciously falsifying the Negro's role in the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, by monstrously contriving scenes like that of the Negro legislators in session "lounging back in their chairs with their bare feet up on their desks, a bottle of whiskey in one band and a leg of chicken in the other ... the while intimidating white girls in the gallery with nods, winks and lewd suggestions" (Peter Noble, The Negro in Films London, p. 37), this picture set the style for all future slanders of the Negro people and distortions of the Reconstruction period. The film, concretely, aimed to "justify" the denial of civil rights and equal opportunities to Negroes, and to rationalize frame-ups, terror, and lynchings, as both "necessary" and "romantic"!

A storm of protest arose when the film was released. Many theatres exhibiting it were picketed. Foremost in this campaign against the picture were the Negro people themselves. The protest actions of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People encouraged other sections of the population, including prominent individuals, to engage in the fight. As a result, the film was banned for a time in a number of states.

The picture has been revived repeatedly since then, even during World War II, at which time vigorous protest from the Negro newspapers, as well as from the Communist press, particularly the Daily Worker, forced its withdrawal. The pledge of the Chief of the Bureau of Motion Pictures of the Office of War Information that the film would not be shown again has, like many such bourgeois promises, been broken. Today this foul and vicious spectacle is again on display in various parts of the country.

No doubt, The Birth of a Nation contributed to the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan, which it glorified--an organization which by 1924 counted five million members.

From that time on, all Hollywood pictures dealing with the south or the Civil War have had a pro-Confederate bias. In not one is the North shown to have waged the just side of the war, or to have legitimately won the war against the slaveowners. Such pictures have proved an ideological support for the alliance of Wall Street and the Southern plantation system in all its racist, pro-fascist, imperialist policies.

In the thirty-five years of capitalist film-making since The Birth of a Nation, that picture stands out as the classic example of Hollywood's ruthless basic strategy with regard to the Negro people, not yet masked by such tactical adjustments and maneuvers as became unavoidable in after times.

It is unnecessary to detail the course of those minor changes in the intermediate period, from film to film and from type to type. The operation of a constant strategy, despite variations of tactic, that we have traced in the course of the first seventeen years of commercial film-making in the United States, could be shown as equally dominant through the subsequent period--from the "prosperity decade" following the First World War, through the "depression years" and the "New Deal era," to the Second World War and the "peace" years since.

The "Negro Interest" Films

It is against this historical background that we must examine the new series of Hollywood "Negro interest" films so far represented by Home of the Brave, Lost Boundaries, Pinky, and Intruder in the Dust. (Hollywood has since added The Jackie Robinson Story and No Way Out. These films continue the pattern analyzed in this study.)

One key question can lead us to a keener understanding of these films, and their role in monopoly capital's blueprint for dividing and conquering. It demands the fullest analysis and the clearest answer. For with these films Hollywood has forged a new ideological weapon. It now assumes the appearance of a crusading sword, raised in defense of the Negro people. But what hand holds the hilt? Is it aimed accurately at the deep roots of oppression--or is it aimed and wielded, after all, against the Negro people? Let us watch the sword in action.

Our key question, then, is: Does this new film cycle signify a real advance in Hollywood's treatment of the Negro?

It cannot be disputed that, in a formal sense, these films seem to leave behind the traditional Hollywood cliché Negro. Their central themes and characters do not seem to bear the mark of the Uncle Tom stereotype; or the viciously libellous sub-human brute type; or the "comic relief" calumny á la Stepin Fetchit; or the bucolic myth of laughing, singing, romping, happy-all-the-day field hands possessed of the mentality of children and blessed with a natural contentment that makes the idea of freedom a rude, Northern interference.

In each of the four motion pictures, we get the formal, outward aspect of a serious and dignified presentation of the Negro, in a full-drawn, central role. The hero or heroine moves through unfolding dramatic situations that are calculated to evoke (within the limitations of the film's ideology) the sympathetic response of the audience for the Negro protagonist. The composite Negro protagonist emerges from this film series with qualities of moral courage, devotion and principled conduct. Not all of these qualities apply equally to each of the Negro central characters in the films. Nevertheless, we have in these films what would seem at very long last the Negro come into his own in the screen drama.

So obviously does this represent a sharp departure from Hollywood's past patterns that, to those who are content with first impressions, these films constitute nothing short of a revolutionary change. Regardless of what must be said in criticism--and what must be said here is fundamental criticism--it would be anything but realistic not to see in this new screen depiction of the Negro the fact that the advancing movement of the Negro people, together with their white labor and progressive allies, has forced a new tactical concession from the enemy. At the same time, it would be even more unrealistic not to see in this very concession a new mode--more dangerous because more subtle--through which the racist ruling class of our country is today re-asserting its strategic ideology of "white supremacy" on the Hollywood screen.

Let us examine the films themselves, matching reality against appearance, in theme and content, and in mode of presentation; comparing total impression with presumed intent, in the messages these films convey to the millions.

The New Stereotype

We begin with Pinky. The film deals with a Southern Negro young woman, named Pinky (a slang term for a light-complexioned Negro who can pass for white). While studying in Boston to become a registered nurse, Pinky (Jeanne Crain) falls in love with a white doctor. Unable to tell her suitor of her Negro origin, Pinky runs away from what has become for her an impossible situation. She returns to the South, home to her washerwoman grandmother, Aunt Dicey (Ethel Waters). Here, she again encounters the real life of her people at first hand. The young Northern doctor, who follows her to the South, where he learns from her that she is a Negro, urges her to marry him, on condition however that she return North with him, "come away from all this," and keep from the world her Negro identity. She spurns his request. He leaves. At the insistence of her grandmother, much against her will, Pinky consents to nurse an aristocratic, cantankerous, old woman--Miss Em (Ethel Barrymore)--who is dying in her decaying plantation mansion.

From an early revulsion, there comes about a mutual attraction between Pinky and this hard-shelled woman with the "heart of gold." The change is not too clearly motivated, although an indicated factor is Miss Em's detestation of her designing relatives. The old woman dies and--has bequeathed her estate to Pinky! Pinky, however, does not find it easy to inherit "white" property. Miss Em's relatives challenge the will. Pinky fights courageously for her rights. And--God's in his heaven: All's right with the South--Pinky is awarded the estate! Her new property is converted into a combination nursery-clinic-training school for Negroes, over which she presides, to five happily ever after, as the fairy tale ends.

That is the bare narrative. What are this picture's positive values--values that the people have forced upon Hollywood? First among this film's positive aspects, then, are the indicting scenes of exposure. The wretched facts of discrimination in the South are memorably etched in several scenes, perhaps the sharpest of this kind in the entire film series.

There is the scene in which the police arrest two Negroes, a man and a woman. Pinky, who is with them, is at first mistaken for white. She is gallantly deferred to by the policemen, who "protect" her from the Negroes at her side. But Pinky defiantly declares herself to be a Negro. Instantly, there is a change in the conduct of the police toward her. We see white ruling-class justice, the only Southern justice, suddenly rip off its mask of chivalry to reveal itself as the racism we know it to be. This is a great, overpowering moment of film realism.

Later, two joy-riding white youths attempt to rape Pinky in a scene of terrifying, dramatic impact. White rapists in a Hollywood film! A rare flash of truth on the American screen. which has the effect of exposing the "rape" libel used to frame-up Negroes as a bestial falsehood, devised to conceal the notorious actuality of legally protected white ruling-class rapism.

The indictment of Bourbon bigotry is documented once again in the scene of the town store, where we are shown dramatically the cruel anti-Negro differential in the upward pricing of commodities to the customer Pinky, when the white merchant discovers that she is a Negro. This is reality caught cold--a piercing comment on the "American way of life."

Finally, on the credit side of the film, there are the positive elements of Pinky's character. Let us examine these in relation to a total realistic view of the film.

In the unfolding struggle for Miss Em's property, there takes place a heavy veiling of true conditions in the South and a busy sowing of illusions in Bourbon justice. In Hollywood's "typical" Southern town, the judge is on the side of justice for the Negro! The court rules in favor of the Negro, and against the rich white plaintiff. What is more, no mass pressure is brought to bear on the court. In fact, the masses are shown as the counter-pressure. The only ones in the entire drama who are really against Pinky and the Negroes are the poor whites; the class struggle between them and the rich whites seemingly rages over the issue of justice for Pinky: the poor whites are against her; the well-to-do whites are for her. Where but on the Hollywood screen can we get such "insight" into the class alignments of social conflict!

The rose-tinting of bigotry and discrimination, of violence and oppression; the toning down of everything that might be a little "too stark"; the deliberate evasion of the fact of existing mounting legal and extra-legal brutality--these emerge as underlying purposes of the film. In this picture, so high with pretensions of "fairness" to the Negro, the shame of all this is not only ignored; it is sedulously denied by the substitution of happenings no Southland ever saw.

The good white fairy of Hollywood and Wall Street has waved her wand: A white aristocratic woman bequeaths her property to her Negro nurse. The town's outstanding attorney, a former judge, takes Pinkey’s case, without retainer. A Southern judge rebukes the ranting lawyer who seeks to rob Pinky of her legacy. A Southern white courtroom mob sits and only mutters; even when the court rules in favor of the Negro, the mob does not act. After the court decision, Pinky is prevented by no one from opening her nursery center on the inherited estate, presumably with fairy gold. And, final triumph of the magic wand: The Ku Klux Klan never arrives!

Variety (November 23, 1949) reports that at one sequence, both Negro and white members of the Atlanta audience applauded. (The audience was separated by segregation, of course.) That was the scene in which Pinky won the court fight. How should this be explained? For the Negroes, that scene was the only moment of victory--false and illusory, contrary to all realities, as it was. While for a section of the whites this scene undoubtedly expressed their approval of just decisions for Negroes, for many others it "proved" how nice and how decent Southern white justice "really is,"

Indeed, the point about the Atlanta audience opens up for consideration the calculated effect of the focal courtroom scene on the varying class and social elements among American moviegoers.

Insofar as the film addresses itself to the worker in the audience, the depiction of the lynch-eager mob, shown to be predominantly made up of poor whites, insults the working class and makes it out to be the social villain of the piece. By deliberately screening from view the lynch-law guilt of the "better classes"--the landlords, industrialists, and bankers--the film aims to break down in the worker his self-confidence and self-respect, and to retard the development of his class consciousness.

To the white middle classes the film addresses itself through the courtroom scene somewhat as follows: The workers, clearly, are uncouth and Klux-ish. Your alliance cannot be with them. The "superior" class forces in the film--all the way from landlord to lawyer--they are the ones who battle m the cause of justice, against the white workers and farmers. Here is the road for your alliance!

To the Negro members of the audience the film, through the courtroom scene, seems to say: Your enemy, you can see, is the camp of the poor whites; your protectors and allies are the others, the "best" whites. With these you must work out your destiny. Shun struggle and Negro-white unity. Under the aegis and paternalistic protection of the plantation rulers and their courts of justice, resign yourselves in permanence to your "racial inferiority."

Bourbon justice has been flattered. And Pinky's magnanimous attorney, now that her victory is achieved, solemnly states: "You've got the land, you've got the house, you've got justice; but I doubt if any other interests of this community have been served." This is a dramatic and ideological high point of the film, artistically underscored. Actually, those are the only memorable lines in terms of idea content. In other words, the picture raises the question: Is the whole thing worth while? We white upper-class people have been very decent and courageous in showing the problem. But in the final analysis, isn't it perhaps all a mistake? And since these words come from the lips of Pinky's white defender, whose "goodness" has been dramatically established, their calculated impact is indeed cogent.

Who is Pinky?

A key to knowing her is to know the reason for her return home. She has left the North because of her inability to go on in her ambiguous position of concealing her Negro identity from her admirer. She is embittered because she has had to run away. She has not come back to her people. When she walks through the streets, she walks with her head up past the Negro children, past the Negro houses and people.

Yet her very running away has forced her to see herself as belonging to the Negro people. This conflict within her explains her declaration in the arrest scene that she is a Negro. It enters into her refusal to accept her white suitor's conditions for their marriage. it is a factor in her sharp emotional outburst against serving Miss Em, who has for many years exploited her grandmother. Pinky’s initial rebellion against this arrangement which her grandmother seeks to effect is confusedly motivated. On the one hand, there is her resentment at being treated as a Negro and even considered as one despite her light complexion: "I'm as white as you are!" she cries out to Miss Em. On the other hand, her emerging sense of identification with her people, together with her newly acquired sense of professional independence, suggests a socially conscious element in her resistance to the paternalistic summons of the over-bearing old white woman in the Big House.

Aunt Dicey sees the conflict in Pinky and seeks to mold her granddaughter in her own image. She is motivated by the desire to survive and to protect her own. But in her abjectness bred of fear and unconsciousness of any way out, she urges upon Pinky to resolve the conflict within her by kneeling to white "superiority." When, at the outset, she reproves Pinky for her "passing," it is not because she holds that her granddaughter should be conscious of the dignity of her people, but that she should "know her place" as a Negro.

Pinky is a "white" Negro, a Negro who can "pass." She is presented in total effect as the "unusual" Negro. She has trained herself in the mannerisms of the whites. She is always conscious of the fact that she has acquired a profession, a skill which is denied to the masses of the young Negro men and women. She is so deliberately contrasted to the other Negro characters as to appear obviously "superior" to them all, and worthy of doing "uplift" work among her people. Because of all this, in Hollywood's alchemized South, a white ruling-class court could not find it out of keeping with its sense of "justice" even to award a verdict to her.

To give the finishing touch to Pinky's "superiority," Hollywood assigned her role to a white woman. Not a Fredi Washington or any one of a score of unquestionably qualified Negro actresses of light complexion was chosen for the leading role of Pinky, but the white actress Jeanne Crain was cast for the part. With all due appreciation for Miss Crain's creditable performance, this fact bears significantly on our evaluation of the film’s central character. For, clearly, it would be going "too far" to let an actual Negro woman, even in a film pretending to have a Negro heroine, defy, in a white man's court, the white supremacist code of robbery of the Negro’s right to inherit; or to let an actual Negro woman be seen in a white lover's embrace, even though that love remains, by the taboo of the Hollywood racist code, unconsummated. If a degree of concession must be made in a Negro character, let it at least be made to a white player, says Hollywood. The logic is plain. The logic is cruel.

Pinky is a character capable of resolute decision and sustained, unflinching action. Hollywood cannot permit her initial rebellion against Miss Em to be a basic rebellion. The film, in effect, sets down that act of defiance against her white benefactress-to-be as merely a mistake of impetuous youth. The New York Times adds the touching comment: "It also presents a tender aspect of the mutual loyalties between Negro servants and white masters that still exist in the South."

1949!

What solution does Pinky offer to the Negro "problem"? It is given by the reformist Negro doctor, representing the Booker T. Washington ideology of gradualism and accommodation to the white rulers. Pinky, let us remember, is schooled; she is a graduate nurse. She cannot be expected to grow into the stereotyped bandanna-wearing "Mammy." Aunt Dicey needs to be "renovated," cast into a new mold. And so, through the ghetto path of "cultured" acquiescence and segregated "uplift" work, Pinky's potential rebelliousness is channeled away from the course of significant struggle, away from the Negro people's movement directed essentially toward national liberation. She moves "forward" into a segregated existence in which she administers a segregated school--a nice, well-mannered, trim Negro woman who "knows her place"--and is liked and helped by the "best" white folk. Here is the "modern," "streamlined" version of the "Mammy" cliché. Hollywood reverses the old stereotype to create the New Stereotype.

Yes, Pinky offers a solution. A reformist, segregationist, paternalistic solution. It is a "solution" which, as in all past Hollywood films, builds on acceptance of the "superiority" of the whites and ends in endorsement of Jim Crow--in this case, "liberal," "benevolent," Social-Democratic Jim Crow.

Pinky, perhaps for fear that the New Stereotype is as yet imperfect for the function of Pinky’s role, abounds in hideous stereotypes of the past. Pinky’s grandmother, Aunt Dicey, who has accepted her oppressed status and moves about with an Uncle Tom loyalty to the "good" white folk, fulfills the old-style "Mammy" cliché, notwithstanding Ethel Waters' brave attempt to invest the part with some dignity. Another stock-character Negro, Jake, is the "bad' shiftless type, the loose loafer and money-loving schemer, with "comic relief." Then there is Jake's "woman," who "totes a razor." The arrest scene, in which Nina Mae McKinney is made to raise her skirt and the white policeman extracts a razor from the rim of her stocking, is reminiscent of the shameful, vilifying tradition of The Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind.

How true is the insight of Robert Ellis who wrote in the progressive Negro weekly, The California Eagle, on October 20, 1949:

One really must judge harshly here of Darryl Zanuck and Elia Kazan and Philip Dunne and Dudley Nichols (the producer, director, and writers respectively). For theirs is the main responsibility, and although they had good intentions, and are, I’m sure, "liberals"—yet they appraoched this picture with too much money in their pockets and too much condescension, patronization, paternalism, in their hearts and minds.

And the same incisive critic puts the question to the film makers responsible for this Jim-Crow practice:

Have you ever stepped down from a railroad car and hunted for the colored toilet--gone hungry because there was no colored seat at the counter--walked along the street and felt the hatred and coldness in most people's eyes merely because of color? . . . How can a studio, how can an industry that doesn’t employ Negroes as writers, producers, technical directors, cameramen:--how can they write, direct, produce, or film a picture which has sincere and real sensitivity (shall we say artistry) about Negro people?

Who can challenge this bitter truth?

[. . . .]

Adding Up the Score

Home of the Brave, Lost Boundaries, Pinky, Intruder in the Dust must be labelled clearly. Taken together, they constitute a new cycle of films that seem to arm, but actually attempt to disarm, the Negro people's movement; that seem to promote the Negro-and-white alliance, but actually attempt to set divisions between Negro and white. They are films that, in the guise of "dignity," introduce a New Stereotype--a continuation of the Uncle Tom tradition, in "modern" dress, while retaining the old stereotypes. They are films that attempt to split the Negro people's solidarity with promises of "rewards" from the "best" whites--"justice" and "positions" for light-skinned, in distinction from dark-skinned, Negroes; "respectability" and "social station" for Negro middle-class professionals, in distinction from working-class Negroes. They are films that seek to prevent the Negro workers from advancing to leadership in the Negro people's liberation movement.

They are films that through distortion and dramatic misrepresentation of fact attempt to shift the blame for Negro oppression to the Negro people themselves. They are films that attempt to inspire in the Negro people trust in their worst enemy--the white ruling class, by portraying that class as the Negro's benefactor and legal protector, while arousing in them mistrust, fear, and hatred against the white working people, who are depicted as the would-be lynchers, as the camp of the lynchers. They are films that seek to make the Negro feel beholden to the white free-enterprisers and to be on his best behavior in expectation of "gradual" emancipation. They are films that attempt to deprive the Negro people of self-confidence in its capacity to struggle, to divert Negroes from collective, mass action, from the Negro people's movement, into individual grapplings with oppression, into efforts at personal "adjustment." They are films that attempt to deny the objective existence of the Negro question, by making lynch-law appear a "moral" problem of the "better class" whites, by making Negro-baiting appear a matter of the Negro's "sensitivity" due to "guilt feeling" and of his baiter’s "unhappiness" and sense of "insecurity." They are films that seek to weaken the Negro people's understanding of the source and nature of their oppression, by means of the Social-Democratic thesis of "no difference" which leaves the Negro masses defenseless against their double oppression, class oppression and national oppression. Apart from positive features already discussed these films aim to undermine the Negro people's struggle for national liberation from the "master race" domination of landlords, industrialists, and bankers, and to blunt any struggle against the monopolists and their war-and-fascism program.

In terms of the white audiences, similarly, this cycle of films expresses a reactionary ideology. In their total impact, these films would have the white masses believe that the ruling class is concerned over the Negro people's plight, that it seeks to promote their welfare, is democratically minded toward them, and aims to do away with lynchings and discrimination. Implicit in such propaganda, insofar as it is directed to white workers and progressives, is the negation of the mutually vital need for the alliance between the working class and the Negro people's liberation movement. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Social-Democratic, labor-reformist, and liberal publications joined with the open bourgeois press in acclaiming these films. They said in effect: Leave it to the ruling class, leave it to the Truman government, leave it to the courts leave it to the churches, leave it to the moral sense of the "right-thinking," "better-class" whites.

This film cycle in an over-all sense leaves to the white masses the ideological residue that the Negro must "know his place," and that whatever rights need to be accorded him must be given within the framework of that idea. The white spectator is taught to regard the Negro people as "unfortunate" beings, toward whom the whites should exercise "tolerance" and to whom they should give moral "hand-outs." By means of this patronizing, white chauvinist "morality," such films seek to perpetuate the myth of Negro "inferiority" and to beguile the white masses with the fiction of "white superiority"--that deliberately- and artificially-fostered ideology from which only the white rulers profit.

These films, moreover, in presenting the poor white masses as the lynchers, attempt to make them appear responsible for the Jim-Crow segregation and oppression of the Negro people, to make them appear the breeders of white chauvinism. Thus, white chauvinism, the ideological weapon with which imperialism buttresses its national oppression of the Negro people, is made to appear "inherent" in the white masses, who are victims of the same ruling class. Of course, the poison of chauvinism infiltrates the ranks of the masses of the oppressor nation; and to the extent that they fail to join in fighting alliance with the subject nation, they bear an onus for the national oppression and for the pernicious chauvinist ideology. But the chauvinism which these white masses manifest is alien to their interests and to their class morality, and has to be purged from their midst. Indeed, the very idea that chauvinism is inherent is itself chauvinist. Such films serve their purpose as brakes on joint mass action of Negroes and whites. They have the effect of disorienting the white masses from the clear view of their responsibilities--inseparable from their own interests--to the oppressed Negro people. To that extent, they retard the development of the broad people's unity so vitally necessary in today's grim struggle against war and fascism, so vitally necessary for the national liberation of the Negro people and for the achievement of Socialism.

These "Negro interest" films appear at the very time when the Negro people are being subjected to increasing discrimination and oppression. The falsity of these films in artistic terms is in measure to their political service to reaction. They distort the reality of the Negro people's struggle, which is concerned with jobs, housing, education, equal rights, and peace.

American imperialism aims with its Truman "New Look" demagogy to convince the Negro people in upsurge that their fate is safely in the hands of the "best" white folk, that their social condition is every day in every way getting better and better, and that therefore they should tolerate "occasional" Georgia lynchings or Harlem police shootings, and pay no heed to the "trouble-making" Paul Robesons and Ben Davises. This propaganda tries to conceal the persistent failure--chargeable to both parties of capitalism--to establish a Fair Employment Practices Commission, to enact anti-poll tax and anti-lynching legislation, to outlaw Jim Crow in the armed forces, and to pass a Federal civil rights measure. It puts a veil over the systematic exclusion of Negro workers from positions in basic industries limitedly acquired in war time, through wholesale firings, down-grading on the jobs, and restriction of job openings to the hardest and most menial work. This general condition is reflected in the sharp rise of Negro unemployment: In New York, as of 1949, Negroes constituted about 20 per cent of all unemployed, whereas their population percentage (according to data from the preliminary census of 1950) is 9.5 per cent; in Chicago and Toledo, nearly half of the registered unemployed were Negroes. (The Economic Crisis and the Cold War, edited by James C. Allen and Doxey Wilkerson, New Century Publishers, New York, 1949, p. 70). In city after city, the majority of the unemployed Negro workers have already consumed their unemployment insurance and are at the mercy of inadequate and precarious relief dispensations.

Truman's showy "civil rights" bunting would cover up the shocking living conditions in Negro ghetto communities--such appalling facts as that rentals in Harlem's dilapidated, rat-infested, stifling tenements consume 45 percent of the family income, as against 20 percent in the rest of Manhattan; that Harlem's maternal death rate is double that of the rest of New York City's and its tuberculosis rate quadruple (See Look magazine's article "Harlem ... New York's Tinder Box," December 6, 1949, by its staff writer, Lewis W. Gillenson).

And in the field of education the President's "civil rights" demagoguery would drown out the growing protests against the quota system for Negro students in colleges, and against the appalling segregation in public schools legally authorized in twenty-one states and the District of Columbia, and permitted in eleven others. (See the article, "Civil Rights and Minorities" by Paul Hartman and Morton Puner, New Republic, January 30, 1950.) In the sphere of the arts and professions the same demagoguery would silence indignation against the notorious discriminatory practices, as shockingly exposed in March, 1947, at the conference of the Cultural Division of the former National Negro Congress. (For some of the facts relating to discrimination against Negro artists and workers in the cultural media, see Culture in a Changing World, by V. J. Jerome, New Century Publishers, 1947, pp. 31-33). In the sphere alone of our present survey, the film industry, we must take sharp note of the fact that Hollywood does not employ a single Negro writer, director, sound man, cameraman, or other technician. And, as we have seen in regard to the very films that are offered as an earnest of a "new approach" to the Negro people, in two of the four pictures in the cycle the major Negro characters were denied to Negro actors. In the face of these glaring facts, Mrs. Roosevelt writes:

Things have been improving in the economic field and in education for the colored people. I would also say in the field of arts that there is an increasing opportunity for them to gain recognition on an equal basis. But if Mr. Robeson succeeds in labelling his race as a group as Communists, many of these gains will be lost, I am afraid, in the future (New York World Telegram, November 3, 1949).

In plain words, the Negro people must be made to under, stand: either you line up on the political side the "best" white people choose for you, or else--. This is the same Mrs. Roosevelt, chairman of the U.N. Human Rights Commission which was castigated in a group petition prepared by the eminent Negro scholar Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois: "We charge that the Human Rights Commission under Eleanor Roosevelt, its chairman . . . have consistently and deliberately ignored scientific procedure and just treatment to the hurt and hounded of the world" (National Guardian, December 5, 1949).

Imperialism draws willing aides for its chauvinist propganda from the reactionary Social-Democrats and reformist labor leaders, as well as from Negro bourgeois nationalist leaders. Their role in the mass organizations of the Negro people and among Negro trade unionists is to undermine the self-confidence and arrest the militant advance of the Negro people’s movement, and, above all, to thwart the historical alliance of that movement with the American working class. In the concrete terms of today, their assistance to imperialism is aimed at "selling" Wall Street's war program to the Negro masses.

In this light, we can perhaps more readily understand the policy of "elevating" certain upper-stratum Negro leaders which serves to give the impression of full integration of the Negro people in American life. American imperialism cultivates in this period a tissue-thin top layer of Negro aristocracy, while it intensifies white ruling-class violence and terror, both legal and extra-legal. This new tactic is designed to reinforce its ideological transmission belt among the Negro people and to bring false comfort to the angry Negro masses in order to blind them with illusions and blunt their capacity for struggle, in order to break their resistance to the despoilers and warmongers.

The sundry misleaders of the Negro people constitute a grave threat to the present status and future development of its liberation movement. For it should be clear that the movement of the Negro people cannot go forward today unless it marches shoulder to shoulder with the world anti-imperialist front of struggle for peace and national freedom. By the same logic of historical necessity, the peace front in the United States today cannot advance unless it makes the fight for Negro rights an organic part of its struggle.

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"Man Underground"

Review of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

by Saul Bellow

published in Commentary (June 1952)

(pp. 608-610)

A few years ago, in an otherwise dreary and better forgotten number of Horizon devoted to a louse-up of life in the United States, I read with great excitement an episode from Invisible Man. It described a free-for-all of blindfolded Negro boys at a stag party of the leading citizens of a small Southern town. Before being blindfolded the boys are made to stare at a naked white woman; then they are herded into the ring, and, after the battle royal, one of the fighters, his mouth full of blood, is called upon to give his high school valedictorian's address. As he stands under the lights of the noisy room, the citizens rib him and make him repeat himself; an accidental reference to equality nearly ruins him, but everything ends well and he receives a handsome briefcase containing a scholarship to a Negro college.

This episode, I thought, might well be the high point of an excellent novel. It has turned out to be not the high point but rather one of the many peaks of a book of the very first order, a superb book. The valedictorian is himself Invisible Man. He adores the college but is thrown out before long by its president, Dr. Bledsoe, a great educator and leader of his race, for permitting a white visitor to visit the wrong places in the vicinity. Bearing what he believes to be a letter of recommendation from Dr. Bledsoe he cornes to New York. The letter actually warns prospective employers against him. He is recruited by white radicals and becomes a Negro leader, and in the radical movement he learns eventually that throughout his entire life his relations with other men have been schematic; neither with Negroes nor with whites has he ever been visible, real. I think that in reading the Horizon excerpt I may have underestimated Mr. Ellison's arnbition and power for the following very good reason, that one is accustomed to expect excellent novels about boys, but a modern novel about men is exceedingly rare. For this enormously complex and difficult American experience of ours very few people are willing to make themselves morally and intellectually responsible. Consequently, maturity is hard to find.

It is commonly felt that there is no strength to match the strength of those powers which attack and cripple modern mankind. And this feeling is, for the reader of modern fiction, all too often confirmed when he approaches a new book. He is prepared, skeptically, to find what he has found before, namely, that family and class, university, fashion, the giants of publicity and manufacture, have had a larger share in the creation of someone called a writer than truth or imaginationthat Bendix and Studebaker and the nylon division of Du Pont, and the University of Chicago, or Columbia or Harvard or Kenyon College, have once more proved mightier than the single soul of an individual; to find that one more lightly manned position has been taken. But what a great thing it is when a brilliant individual victory occurs, like Mr. Ellison's, proving that a truly heroic quality can exist among our contemporaries. People too thoroughly determined and our institutions by their size and force too thoroughly determinecan't approach this quality. That can only be done by those who resist the heavy influences and make their own synthesis out of the vast mass of phenomena, the seething, swarming body of appearances, facts, and details. From this harassment and threatened dissolution by details, a writer tries to rescue what is important. Even when he is most bitter, he makes by his tone a declaration of values and he says, in effect: There is something nevertheless that a man may hope to be. This tone, in the best pages of Invisible Man, those pages, for instance, in which an incestuous Negro farmer tells his tale to a white New England philanthropist, comes through very powerfully; it is tragi-comic, poetic, the tone of the very strongest sort of creative intelligence. In a time of specialized intelligences, modern imaginative writers make the effort to maintain themselves as unspecialists, and their quest is for a true middle-of-consciousness for everyone. What language is it that we can all speak, and what is it that we can all recognize, burn at, weep over, what is the stature we can without exaggeration claim for ourselves; what is the main address of consciousness?

I was keenly aware, as I read this book, of a very significant kind of independence in the writing. For there is a way for Negro novelists to go at their problems, just as there are Jewish or Italian ways. Mr. Ellison has not adopted a minority tone. If he had done so, he would have failed to establish a true middle-of-consciousness for everyone.

Negro Harlem is at once primitive and sophisticated; it exhibits the extremes of instinct and civilization as few other American communities do. If a writer dwells on the peculiarity of this, he ends with an exotic effect. And Mr. Ellison is not exotic. For him this balance of instinct and culture or civilization is not a Harlem matter; it is the matter, German, French, Russian, American, universal, a matter very little understood. It is thought that Negroes and other minority people, kept under in the great status battle, are in the instinct cellar of dark enjoyment. This imagined enjoyment provokes envious rage and murder; and then it is a large portion of human nature itself which becomes the fugitive murderously pursued. In our society ManHimselfis idolized and publicly worshipped, but the single individual must hide himself underground and try to save his desires, his thoughts, his soul, in invisibility. He must return to himself, learning self-acceptance and rejecting all that threatens to deprive him of his manhood.

This is what I make of Invisble Man. It is not by any means faultless; I don't think the hero's experiences in the Communist party are as original in conception as other parts of the book, and his love affair with a white woman is all too brief, but it is an immensely moving novel and it has greatness.

So many hands have been busy at the interment of the novelthe hand of Paul Valery, the hands of the editors of literary magazines, of scholars who decide when genres come and go, the hands of innumerable pip-squeaks as wellthat I cant help feeling elated when a resurrection occurs. People read history and then seem to feel that everything has to CODclude in their own time. We have read history, and therefore history is over, they appear to say. Really, all that such critics have the right to say is that fine novels are few and far between; That's perfectly true. But then fine anythings are few and far between. If these Critics wanted to be extremely truthful, they'd say they were bored. Boredom, of course, like any rnighty force, you must respect. There is something terribly impressive about the boredom of a man like Valery who could no longer bear to read that the carriage had come for the duchess at four in the afternoon. And certainly there are some notably boring things to which we owe admiration of a sort.

Not all the gravediggers of the novel have such distinction as Valery's, however. Hardly. And it's difficult to think of them as rising dazzled from a volume of Stendhal, exclaiming God! and then with angry determination seizing their shovels to go and heap more clods on the coffin. No, theirs unfortunately isn't often the disappointment of spirits formed under the influence of the masters. They make you wonder how, indeed, they would be satisfied. A recent contributor to _Partisan Review_, for instance, complains that modern fiction does not keep pace with his swift-wheeling modern consciousness which apparently leaves the photon far behind in its speed. He names a few really modern writers of fiction, their work unfortunately still unpublished, and makes a patronizing reference to Invisible Man: almost, but not quite, the real thing, it is raw and "overambitious." And the editors of __Partisan Review_ who have published so much of this modern fiction that their contributor attacks, what do they think of this? They do not say what they think; neither of this piece nor of another lulu on the same subject and in the same issue by John Aldridge. Mr. Aldridge writes: There are only two cultural pockets left in America; and they are the Deep South and that area of northeastern United States whose moral capital is Boston, Massachusetts. This is to say that these are the only places where there are any manners. In all other parts of the country people live in a kind of vastly standardized cultural prairie, a sort of infinite Middle West, and that means that they don't really live and they don't really do anything.

Most Americans thus are Invisible. Can we wonder at thc cruelty of dictators when even a literary critic, without turning a hair. announces the death of a hundred rnillion people? Let us suppose that the novel is, as they say, played out. Let us only suppose it, for I don't believe it. But what if it is so? Will such tasks as Mr. Ellison has set himself no more be performed? Nonsense. New means, when new means are necessary, will be found. To find them is easier than to suit the disappointed consciousness and to penetrate the thick walls of boredom within which life lies dying.

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"The Deep Pit"--a review of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

by Lloyd Brown

in Masses & Mainstream (vol. 5, no. 6 [June 1952])

"Whence all this passion toward conformity?" asks Ralph Ellison at the end of his novel, Invisible Man. He should know, because his whole book conforms exactly to the formula for literary success in today's market. Despite the murkiness of his avant-garde symbolism, the pattern is clear and may be charted as precisely as a publisher's quarterly sales report.

Chapter 1: A 12-page scene of sadism (a command performance of 10 Negro youths savagely beating; each other for the Bourbons reward of scattered coins), sex (a dance by a naked whore with a small American flag tattooed upon her belly), and shock (literally applied to the performers by an electrically charged rug) .

Chapter 2: Featuring a 14-page scene in which a poor Negro farmer tells a white millionaire in great detail how he committed incest with his daughter; and the millionaire, who burns to do the same to his own daughter, rewards the narrator with a hundred-dollar bill.

And so on, to the central design of American Century literature anti-Communism.

Author Ellison will reap more than scattered change or a crumpled bill for his performance. Invisible Man is already visible on the best-seller lists. The quivering excitement of the commercial reviewers matches that of the panting millionaire.

Strangely, there is much truth in their shouts of acclaim: "It is a sensational and feverishly emotional book. It will shock and sicken some readers . . . the hero is a symbol of doubt, perplexity, betrayal and defeat . . . tough, brutal and [again] sensational," says Orville Prescott in the New York Times about "the most impressive work of filction by an American Negro which I have ever read."

"Here," writes Daniel James in the war-mongering New Leader, "the author establishes, in new terms, the commonness of every human's fate: nothingness."

"Authentic air of unreality," exults the reviewer in the Sunday Times, about the part dealing with the "Brotherhood" (Ellison's euphemism for the Communist Party).

The Sunday New York Herald Tribune man knows what he likes too:

"For a grand finale theres the hot, dry August night of the big riot when the hungry looted, when Ras the destroyer of white appeasersalone was out for blood; when Sybil, the chestnut-haired nymphomaniac, was raped by Santa Claus and when the Invisible Man, still clutching his briefease, fell through an open grill into a coal cellarand stayed there to write a book...."

The Saturday Review of Literature is also impressed with this work that is as "'unreal' as a surrealist painting. . . . It is unlikely that Invisible Man is intended to be a realistic novel, although the detail is as teal as the peeling paint on an old house."

At this point a reviewer in M&M might very well say "Amen!" and leave the unpleasant subject. But the commercial claque does more than extol Ellison's "surrealist horror," "well-ordered dissonance," "Dostoyevskianism," and thrill to "Harlem's slough of despond." We see that the same Saturday Review critic who is happily certain that this is not a realistic novel insists that ". . . here, for the first time, is the whole truth about the Negro in America."

The mind reels before a statement such as that, compounded as it is of an ignorance so stupendous that it can only be matched by its arrogance.

Ostensibly set in Negro life, the novel is profoundly anti-Negro and it is this quality which moved several of the chauvinist critics to say that its author has "transcended race" and "writes as well as a white man" the highest accolade they can bestow!

Here, as in James Jones' whine From Here to Eternity, is the one-man-against-the-world theme, a theme which cannot tell the "whole truth" or any part of the truth about the Negro people in America or about any other people anywhere.

Ellison's narrator-hero is a shadowy concept, lacking even the identity of a name, who tells of his Odyssey through a Negro college in the South, then to Harlem where he is hired by the Communists as their mass leader ("How would you like to be the new Booker T. Washington?'') for $300 cash advance and the munificent, depression-period pay of $60 per week; he is quickly disillusioned and, battered in body and soul, finds refuge down a man-hole from whence to write a book about it all.

It would not be in order here to speak of responsibility, for the writer has anticipated and answered that objection in the prologue: "I can hear you say, 'What a horrible, irresponsible bastard!' And you're right. I leap to agree with you. I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived."

Nor will I here attempt to refute the particular variations of the antiCommunist lie that Ellison tells. Some idea of his writing on this subject can be gained when we see even the New Leader, second to none in Redbaiting viciousness, complaining that "Ellison's Communists are hard to believe, they are so unrelievedly humorless, cynical and degenerate (including the black Communists)." And the Nation's reviewerwho says he is "ready to believe" the worst about "Harlem Stalinists"grumbles: "The trouble with such caricature is that it undermines the intention behind it." (Nevertheless he finds the book "exalted." )

And just as thc author makes his irresponsibility undebatable, so does he help establish the fact that his work is alien to the Negro people and has its source in upper-class corruption. According to an interview in the Saturday Review it was "T. S. Eliot's 'The Wasteland' which . . changed the direction of his life: 'Eliot said something to my sensibilities that I couldn't find in Negro poets who wrote of experiences I myself had gone through.'"

Indeed, there is nothing in common between the wailing eunuchs of decay on the one hand, and the passionate strength and beauty of Negro poetry on the other. One can only speculate as to what it was in Ellison's "sensibilities" that drew him to Eliot and away from his peopleand away from all people. But the result of the infection is a tragedy: the firstborn of a talented young Negro writer enters the world with no other life than its maggots.

Ellison is also a disciple of the Richard Wright-Chester Himes school and shares with these writers their bitter alienation from the Negro people, their hatred and contempt of the Negro working masses, their renegades' malice and their servility to the masters. Cut of from the surging mainstream of Negro life and struggle and creativity, they stagnate in Paris, wander on lonely crusades, or spit out at the world from a hole in the ground.

But against them and their inspirers is the growing renaissance of the Negro people's culturewriters, playwrights, poets, singers, musicians, dancers, artists and actors, who are linked with their people, who love their people and who sing with the Negro poet of long ago: "Lord, I don't want to be like Judas In my heart....

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review of: Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

by Irving Howe

published in The Nation May 10, 1952

This novel is a soaring and exalted record of a Negro's journey through contemporary America in search of success, companionship, and, finally, himself; like all our fictions devoted to the idea of experience, it moves from province to city, from naive faith to disenchantment; and despite its structural incoherence and occasional pretentiousness of manner, it is one of the few remarkable first novels we have had in some years.

The beginning is nightmare. A Negro boy, timid and compliant, comes to a white smoker in a Southern town: he is to be awarded a scholarship. Together with several other Negroes he is rushed to the front of the ballroom, where a sumptuous blonde tantalizes and frightens them by dancing in the nude. Blindfolded, the Negro boys stage a "battle royal," a free-for-all in which they pummel each other to the drunken shouts of the whites. "Practical jokes," humiliations, terrors--and then the boy delivers a prepared speech of gratitude to his white benefactors.

Nothing, fortunately, in the rest of the novel is quite so harrowing. The unnamed hero goes to his Southern college and is expelled for having innocently taken a white donor through a Negro gin-mill; he then leaves for New York, where he works in a factory, becomes a soapboxer for the Harlem Communists, a big wheel in the Negro world, and the darling of the Stalinist bohemia; and finally, in some not quite specified way, he finds himself after witnessing a frenzied riot in Harlem.

Though immensely gifted, Ellison is not a finished craftsman. The tempo of his book is too feverish, and at times almost hysterical. Too often he tries to overwhelm the reader; but when he should be doing something other then overwhelm, when he should be persuading or suggesting or simply telling, he forces and tears.

Because the book is written in the first person singular, Ellison cannot establish ironic distance between his hero and himself, or between the matured "I" telling the story and the "I" who is its victim. And because the experience is so apocalyptic and magnified, it absorbs and then dissolves the hero; every minor character comes through brilliantly, but the seeing "I" is seldom seen.

The middle section of novel concerns the Harlem Stalinists, and it is the only one that strikes me as not quite true. Writing with evident bitterness, Ellison makes his Stalinists so stupid and vicious that one cannot understand how they could have attracted him. I am ready to believe that the Communist Party manipulates its members with conscious cynicism, but I am quite certain that this cynicism is both more guarded and more complex than Ellison assumes; surely no Stalinist leader would tell a prominent Negro member, "You were not hired to think" -- even if that were what he secretly felt. The trouble with such caricature is that it undermines the intention behind it, making the Stalinists seem not the danger they are but mere clowns.

Equally disturbing is Ellison's apparent wish to be intellectually up-to-date. As his hero quits the Communist Party, he wonders: "Could politics ever be an expression of love?" This portentous and perhaps meaningless question, whatever its place in a little magazine, is surely inappropriate to a character who has been presented mainly as a passive victim of experience. Not am I persuaded by the hero's final discovery that "my world has become one of infinite possibilities," his refusal to be the invisible man whose body is manipulated by various social groups. Though the unqualified assertion of individuality is at the moment a favorite notion of literary people, it is also a vapid one, for the unfortunate fact remains that to define one's individuality is to stumble over social fences that do not allow one "infinite possibilities." It is hardly an accident that Ellison's hero does not even attempt to specify those possibilities.

These faults mar Invisible Man but do not destroy it. For Ellison has an abundance of that primary talent without which neither craft nor intelligence can save a novelist; he is richly, wildly inventive; his scenes rise and dip with tension, his people bleed, his language stings. No other writer has captured so much of the confusion and agony, the hidden gloom and surface gaiety of Negro life. His ear for Negro speech is magnificent: a share-cropper calmly describing how he seduced his own daughter, a Harlem street-vender spinning jive, a West Indian woman inciting her men to resist an eviction. The rhythm of the prose is harsh and tensed, like a beat of harried alertness. The observation is expert: Ellison knows exactly how zoot-suiters walk, making stylization their principle of life, and exactly how the antagonism between American and West Indian Negroes works itself out in speech and humor. For all his self-involvement, he is capable of extending himself toward his people, of accepting them as they are, in their blindness and hope. And in his final scene he has created and unforgettable image: "Ras the Destroyer," a Negro nationalist, appears on a horse, dressed in the costume of an Abyssinian chieftain, carrying spear and shield, and charging wildly into the police -- a black Quixote, mad, absurd, yet unbearably pathetic.

Some reviewers, from the best of intentions, have assured their readers that this is a good novel and not merely a good Negro novel. But of course Invisible Man is a Negro novel -- what white man could ever have written it? It is drenched in Negro life, talk, music: it tells us how distant even the best of the whites are from the black men that pass them on the streets; and it is written from a particular compound of emotions that no white man could possibly simulate. To deny that this is a Negro novel is to deprive the Negroes of their one basic right: the right to cry out their difference.

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Rudyard Kipling, The White Man's Burden (1899)

Born in British India in 1865, Rudyard Kipling was educated in England before returning to India in 1882, where his father was a museum director and authority on Indian arts and crafts. Thus Kipling was thoroughly immersed in Indian culture: by 1890 he had published in English about 80 stories and ballads previously unknown outside India. As a result of financial misfortune, from 1892-96 he and his wife, the daughter of an American publisher, lived in Vermont, where he wrote the two Jungle Books. After returning to England, he published "The White Man's Burden" in 1899, an appeal to the United States to assume the task of developing the Philippines, recently won in the Spanish-American War. As a writer, Kipling perhaps lived too long: by the time of his death in 1936, he had come to be reviled as the poet of British imperialism, though being regarded as a beloved children's book author. Today he might yet gain appreciation as a transmitter of Indian culture to the West.

What is it today's reader finds so repugnant about Kipling's poem? If you were a citizen of a colonized territory, how would you respond to Kipling?

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Tragedy and the Mind of the Infant

ERNEST JONES

As a child Hamlet had experienced the warmest affection for his mother, and this, as is always so, had contained elements of a disguised erotic quality, still more so in infancy. The presence of two traits in the Queen's character accord with this assumption, namely her markedly sensual nature and her passionate fondness for her son. The former is indicated in too many places in the play to need specific reference, and is generally recognized. The latter is also manifest: Claudius says, for instance (79), "The Queen his mother lives almost by his looks". Nevertheless Hamlet appears to have with more or less success weaned himself from her and to have fallen in love with Ophelia.

The precise nature of his original feeling for Ophelia is a little obscure. We may assume that at least in part it was composed of a normal love for a prospective bride, though the extravagance of the language used (the passionate need for absolute certainty, etc.) suggests a somewhat morbid frame of mind. There are indications that even here the influence of the old attraction for the mother is still exerting itself. Although some writers, following Goethe, see in Ophelia many traits of resemblance to the Queen, perhaps just as striking are the traits contrasting with those of the Queen. Whatever truths there may be in the many German conceptions of Ophelia as a sensual wanton *** still the very fact that it needed what Goethe happily called the "innocence of insanity" to reveal the presence of any such libidinous thoughts demonstrates in itself the modesty and chasteness of her habitual demeanour. Her naive piety, her obedient resignation, and her unreflecting simplicity sharply contrast with the Queen's character, and seem to indicate that Hamlet by a characteristic reaction towards the opposite extreme had unknowingly been impelled to choose a woman who should least remind him of his mother.

A case might even be made out for the view that part of his courtship originated not so much in direct attraction for Ophelia as in an unconscious desire to play her off against his mother, just as a disappointed and piqued lover so often has resort to the arms of a more willing rival. It would not be easy otherwise to understand the readiness with which he later throws himself into this part. When, for instance, in the play scene he replies to his mother's request to sit by her with the words "No, good mother, here's metal more attractive" and proceeds to lie at Ophelia's feet, we seem to have a direct indication of his attitude; and his coarse familiarity and bandying of ambiguous jests with the woman he has recently so ruthlessly jilted are hardly intelligible unless we bear in mind that they were carried out under the heedful gaze of the Queen. It is as if his unconscious were trying to convey to her the following thought: "You give yourself to other men whom you prefer to me. Let me assure you that I can dispense with your favours and even prefer those of a woman whom I no longer love." His extraordinary outburst of bawdiness on this occasion, so unexpected in a man of obviously fine feeling, points unequivocally to the sexual nature of the underlying turmoil. Now comes the father's death and the mother's second marriage. The association of the idea of sexuality with his mother, buried since infancy, can no longer be concealed from his consciousness. As Bradley well says: "Her son was forced to see in her action not only an astounding shallow-ness of feeling, but an eruption of coarse sensuality, 'rank and gross,' speeding post-haste to its horrible delight". Feelings which once, in the infancy of long ago, were pleasurable desires can now, because of his repressions, only fill him with repulsion. The long "repressed" desire to take his father's place in his mother's affection is stimulated to unconscious activity by the sight of someone usurping this place exactly as he himself had once longed to do. More, this someone was a member of the same family, so that the actual usurpation further resembled the imaginary one in being incestuous. Without his being in the least aware of it these ancient desires are ringing in his mind, are once more struggling to find conscious expression, and need such an expenditure of energy again to "repress" them that he is reduced to the deplorable mental state he himself so vividly depicts.

There follows the Ghost's announcement that the father's death was a willed one, was due to murder. Hamlet, having at the moment his mind filled with natural indignation at the news, answers normally enough with the cry (21):

“Haste me to know't, that I with wings as swift

As meditation or the thoughts of love,

May sweep to my revenge.”

The momentous words follow revealing who was the guilty person, namely a relative who had committed the deed at the bidding of lust.

Hamlet's second guilty wish had thus also been realized by his uncle, namely to procure the fulfillment of the first—the possession of the mother—by a personal deed, in fact by murder of the father. The two recent events, the father's death and the mother's second marriage, seemed to the world to have no inner causal relation to each other, but they represented ideas which in Hamlet's unconscious fantasy had always been closely associated. These ideas now in a moment forced their way to conscious recognition in spite of all "repressing forces", and found immediate expression in his almost reflex cry: "O my prophetic soul! My uncle?" The frightful truth his unconscious had already intuitively divined, his consciousness had now to assimilate as best it could. For the rest of the interview Hamlet is stunned by the effect of the internal conflict thus re-awakened, which from now on never ceases, and into the essential nature of which he never penetrates. One of the first manifestations of the awakening of the old conflict in Hamlet's mind is his reaction against Ophelia. This is doubly conditioned by the two opposing attitudes in his own mind. In the first place, there is a complex reaction in regard to his mother.

As was explained above, the being forced to connect the thought of his mother with sensuality leads to an intense sexual revulsion, one that is only temporarily broken down by the coarse outburst discussed above. Combined with this is a fierce jealousy, unconscious because of its forbidden origin, at the sight of her giving herself to another man, a man whom he had no reason whatever either to love or to respect. Consciously this is allowed to express itself, for instance after the prayer scene, only in the form of extreme resentment and bitter reproaches against her. His resentment against women is still further inflamed by the hypocritical prudishness with which Ophelia follows her father and brother in seeing evil in his natural affection, an attitude which poisons his love in exactly the same way that the love of his childhood, like that of all children, must have been poisoned. He can forgive a woman neither her rejection of his sexual advances nor, still less, her alliance with another man. Most intolerable of all to him, as Bradley well remarks, is the sight of sensuality in a quarter from which he had trained himself ever since infancy rigorously to exclude it. The total reaction culminates in the bitter misogyny of his outburst against Ophelia, who is devastated at having to bear a reaction so wholly out of proportion to her own offence and has no idea that in reviling her Hamlet is really expressing his bitter resentment against his mother.

"I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another; you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad.”

On only one occasion does he for a moment escape from the sordid implication with which his love has been impregnated and achieve a healthier attitude towards Ophelia, namely at the open grave when in remorse he breaks out at Laertes for presuming to pretend that his feeling for her could ever equal that of her lover. Even here, however, as Dover Wilson has suggested, the remorse behind his exaggerated behaviour springs not so much from grief at Ophelia's death as from his distress at his bad conscience that had killed his love—he acts the lover he fain would have been. Hamlet's attitude towards Ophelia is still more complex. Dover Wilson has adduced good evidence for thinking that Hamlet is supposed to have overheard the intrigue in which Polonius "looses" his daughter to test her erstwhile lover, a suggestion which had previously been made by Quincy Adams. This is probably an echo of the old (Saxo) saga in which the girl is employed by the king to test his capacity for sexual love and so decide whether he is an imbecile or a cunning enemy. It certainly helps to explain the violence with which he attacks her feminine charms and treats her worse than a paid prostitute. He feels she is sent to lure him on and then, like his mother, to betray him at the behest of another man. The words "Get thee to a nunnery” thus have a more sinister connotation, for in Elizabethan, and indeed in later, times this was also a term for a brothel; the name "Covent Garden" will elucidate the point to any student of the history of London.

The underlying theme relates ultimately to the splitting of the mother image which the infantile unconscious effects into two opposite pictures: one of a virginal Madonna, an inaccessible saint towards whom all sensual approaches are unthinkable, and the other of a sensual creature accessible to everyone. Indications of this dichotomy between love and lust (Titian's Sacred and Profane Love) are to be found later in most men's sexual experiences. When sexual repression is highly pronounced, as with Hamlet, then both types of women are felt to be hostile: the pure one out of resentment at her repulses, the sensual one out of the temptation she offers to plunge into guiltiness. Misogyny, as in the play, is the inevitable result.

The intensity of Hamlet's repulsion against woman in general, and Ophelia in particular, is a measure of the powerful "repression" to which his sexual feelings are being subjected. The outlet for those feelings in the direction of his mother has always been firmly dammed, and now that the narrower channel in Ophelia's direction has also been closed the increase in the original direction consequent on the awakening of early memories tasks all his energy to maintain the "repression". His pent-up feelings find a partial vent in other directions. The petulant irascibility and explosive outbursts called forth by his vexation at the hands of Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, and especially of Polonius, are evidently to be interpreted in this way, as also is in part the burning nature of his reproaches to his mother. Indeed, towards the end of his interview with his mother the thought other misconduct expresses itself in that almost physical disgust which is so characteristic a manifestation of intensely "repressed" sexual feeling.

Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed,

Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mouse,

And let him for a pair of reechy kisses,

Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers,

Make you to ravel all this matter out

(65)

Hamlet's attitude towards Polonius is highly instructive. Here the absence of family tie and of other similar influences enables him to indulge to a relatively unrestrained extent his hostility towards what he regards as a prating and sententious dotard.

The analogy he effects between Polonius and Jephthah is in this connection especially pointed. It is here that we see his fundamental attitude towards moralizing elders who use their power to thwart the happiness of the young, and not in the over-drawn and melodramatic portrait in which he delineates his father: "A combination and a form indeed, where every god did seem to set his seal to give the world assurance of a man". It will be seen from the foregoing that Hamlet's attitude towards his uncle-father is far more complex than is generally supposed. He of course detests him, but it is the jealous detestation of one evil-doer towards his successful fellow. Much as he hates him, he can never denounce him with the ardent indignation that boils straight from his blood when he reproaches his mother, for the more vigorously he denounces his uncle the more powerfully does he stimulate to activity his own unconscious and "repressed" complexes. He is therefore in a dilemma between on the one hand allowing his natural detestation of his uncle to have free play, a consummation which would stir still further his own horrible wishes, and on the other hand ignoring the imperative call for the vengeance that his obvious duty demands. His own "evil" prevents him from completely denouncing his uncle's, and in continuing to "repress" the former he must strive to ignore, to condone, and if possible even to forget the latter; his moral fate is bound up with his uncle's for good or ill. In reality his uncle incorporates the deepest and most buried part of his own personality, so that he cannot kill him without also killing himself. This solution, one closely akin to what Freud has shown to be the motive of suicide in melancholia, is actually the one that Hamlet finally adopts. The course of alternate action and inaction that he embarks on, and the provocations he gives to his suspicious uncle, can lead to no other end than to his own ruin and, incidentally, to that of his uncle. Only when he has made the final sacrifice and brought himself to the door of death is he free to fulfill his duty, to avenge his father, and to slay his other self—his uncle. There are two moments in the play when he is nearest to murder, and it is noteworthy that in both the impulse has been dissociated from the unbearable idea of incest. The second is of course when he actually kills the King, when the Queen is already dead and lost to him forever, so that his conscience is free of an ulterior motive for the murder. The first is more interesting. It is clear that Hamlet is a creature of highly charged imagination; Vischer, for instance, quite rightly termed him a "Phantasiemensch". As is known, the danger then is that phantasy may on occasion replace reality. Now Otto Rank, who uses the same term, has plausibly suggested that the emotionally charged play scene, where a nephew kills his uncle(!), and when there is no talk of adultery or incest, is in Hamlet's imagination an equivalent for fulfilling his task.

It is easier to kill the King when there is no ulterior motive behind it, no talk of mother or incest. When the play is over he is carried away in exultation as if he had really killed the King himself, whereas all he has actually done is to warn him and so impel him to sign a death warrant. That his pretext for arranging the play—to satisfy himself about Claudius' guilt and the Ghost's honesty—is specious is plain from the fact that before it he had been convinced of both and was reproaching him- self for his neglect. When he then comes on the King praying, and so to speak finds him surprisingly still alive, he realizes that his task is still in front of him, but can only say "Now might I do it" (not "will"). He then expresses openly the unconscious thoughts of his infancy—the wish to kill the man who is lying with his mother ("in th' incestuous pleasure of his bed")—but he knows only too well that his own guilty motive for doing so would always prevent him. So there is no way out of the dilemma, and he blunders on to destruction.

The call of duty to kill his stepfather cannot be obeyed because it links itself with the unconscious call of his nature to kill his mother's husband, whether this is the first or the second; the absolute "repression" of the former impulse involves the inner prohibition of the latter also. It is no chance that Hamlet says of himself that he is prompted to his revenge "by heaven and hell".

In this discussion of the motives that move or restrain Hamlet we have purposely depreciated the subsidiary ones—such as his exclusion from the throne where Claudius has blocked the normal solution of the Oedipus complex (to succeed the father in due course)—which also play a part, so as to bring out in greater relief the deeper and effective ones that are of preponderating importance. These, as we have seen, spring from sources of which he is quite unaware, and we might summarize the internal conflict of which he is the victim as consisting in a struggle of the "repressed" mental processes to become conscious. The call of duty, which automatically arouses to activity these unconscious processes, conflicts with the necessity of "repressing" them still more strongly; for the more urgent is the need for external action the greater is the effort demanded of the "repressing" forces. It is his moral duty, to which his father exhorts him, to put an end to the incestuous activities of his mother (by killing Claudius), but his unconscious does not want to put an end to them (he being identified with Claudius in the situation), and so he cannot. His lashings of self-reproach and remorse are ultimately because of this very failure, i.e. the refusal of his guilty wishes to undo the sin. By refusing to abandon his own incestuous wishes he perpetuates the sin and so must endure the stings of torturing conscience. And yet killing his mother's husband would be equivalent to committing the original sin himself, which would if anything be even more guilty. So of the two impossible alternatives he adopts the passive solution of letting the incest continue vicariously, but at the same time provoking destruction at the King's hand. Was ever a tragic figure so torn and tortured!

Action is paralyzed at its very inception, and there is thus produced the picture of apparently causeless inhibition which is so inexplicable both to Hamlet and to readers of the play. This paralysis arises, however, not from physical or moral cowardice, but from that intellectual cowardice, that reluctance to dare the exploration of his inmost soul, which Hamlet shares with the rest of the human race. "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all."

1. It is not maintained that this was by any means Claudius' whole motive, but it was evidently a powerful one and the one that most impressed Hamlet.

2. His similar tone and advice to the two women show plainly how closely they are identified in his mind.

Compare:. "Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?" (46-47) with

"Refrain to-night: And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence" (65).

The identification is further demonstrated in the course of the play by Hamlet's killing the men who stand between him and these women (Claudius and Polonius).

3. This exhortation (with its usual connotation of chastity) may be equated with the one addressed later to his mother, "Go not to my uncle's bed", indicating Hamlet's identification of the two women in his feelings.

4. It is noteworthy how many producers and actors seem to accept Hamlet's distorted estimate of Polonius, his garrulity being presumably an excuse for overlooking the shrewdness and soundness of his worldly wisdom. After all, his diagnosis of Hamlet's madness as being due to unrequited love for Ophelia was not so far from the mark, and he certainly recognized that his distressful condition was of sexual origin.

5. There is a delicate point here which may appeal only to psychoanalysis. It is known that the occurrence of a dream within a dream (when one dreams that one is dreaming) is always found when analyzed to refer to a theme which the person wishes were "only a dream", i.e. not true. I would suggest that a similar meaning attaches to a "play within a play", as in "Hamlet". So Hamlet (as nephew) can kill the King in his imagination since it is "only a play" or "only in play".

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The Embassy of Death: An Essay on Hamlet

G. WILSON KNIGHT

It is usual in Shakespeare's plays for the main theme to be reflected in subsidiary incidents, persons, and detailed suggestion throughout. Now the theme of Hamlet is death. Life that is bound for the disintegration of the grave, love that does not survive the loved one's life— both, in their insistence on death as the primary fact of nature, are branded on the mind of Hamlet, burned into it, searing it with agony. The bereavement of Hamlet and his consequent mental agony bordering on madness is mirrored in the bereavement of Ophelia and her madness. The death of the Queen's love is reflected in the swift passing of the love of the Player-Queen, in the 'Murder of Gonzago.' Death is over the whole play. Polonius and Ophelia die during the action, and Ophelia is buried before our eyes. Hamlet arranges the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The plot is set in motion by the murder of Hamlet's father, and the play opens with the apparition of the Ghost:

What may this mean,

That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel

Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,

Making night hideous; and we fools of nature

So horridly to shake our dispositions

With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls? (19)

Those first scenes strike the note of the play—death. We hear of terrors beyond the grave, from the Ghost (21) and from the meditations of Hamlet (45). We hear of horrors in the grave from Hamlet whose mind is obsessed with hideous thoughts of the body's decay. Hamlet's dialogue with the King about the dead Polonius (68-69) is painful; and the graveyard meditations, though often beautiful, are remorselessly realistic. Hamlet holds Yorick's skull:

Hamlet. . . . Now, get you to my lady's chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to

this favour she must come; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

Horatio. What's that, my lord?

Hamlet. Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' the earth?

Horatio. E'en so.

Hamlet. And smelt so? pah! (88)

The general thought of death, intimately related to the predominating human theme, the pain in Hamlet's mind, is thus suffused through the whole play. And yet the play, as a whole, scarcely gives us that sense of blackness and the abysms of spiritual evil which we find in Macbeth; nor is there the universal gloom of King Lear. This is due partly to the difference in the technique of Hamlet from that of Macbeth or King Lear. Macbeth, the protagonist and heroic victim of evil, rises gigantic from the murk of an evil universe; Lear, the king of suffering, towers over a universe that itself toils in pain. Thus in Macbeth and King Lear the predominating imaginative atmospheres are used not to contrast with the mental universe of the hero, but to aid and support it, as it were, with similarity, to render realistic the extravagant and daring effects of volcanic passion to which the poet allows his protagonist to give voice. We are forced by the attendant personification, the verbal colour, the symbolism and events of the play as a whole, to feel the hero's suffering, to see with his eyes. But in Hamlet this is not so. We need not see through Hamlet's eyes. Though the idea of death is recurrent through the play, it is not implanted in the minds of other persons as is the consciousness of evil throughout Macbeth and the consciousness of suffering throughout King Lear. Except for the original murder of Hamlet's father, the Hamlet universe is one of healthy and robust life, good-nature, humour, romantic strength, and welfare: against this background is the figure of Hamlet pale with the consciousness of death. He is the ambassador of death walking amid life. The effect is at first primarily one of separation. But it is to be noted that the consciousness of death, and consequent bitterness, cruelty, and inaction, in Hamlet not only grows in his own mind disintegrating it as we watch, but also spreads its effects outward among the other persons like a blighting disease, and, as the play progresses, by its very passivity and negation of purpose, insidiously undermines the health of the state,

and adds victim to victim until at the end the stage is filled with corpses. It is, as it were, a nihilistic birth in the consciousness of Hamlet that spreads its deadly venom around. That Hamlet is originally blameless, that the King is originally guilty, may well be granted. But, if we refuse to be diverted from a clear vision by questions of praise and blame, responsibility and causality, and watch only the actions and reactions of the persons as they appear, we shall observe a striking reversal of the usual commentary. If we are to attain a true interpretation of Shakespeare we must work from a centre of consciousness near that of the creative instinct of the poet. We must think less in terms of causality and more in terms of imaginative impact. Now Claudius is not drawn as wholly evil—far from it. We see the government of Denmark working smoothly. Claudius shows every sign of being an excellent diplomatist and king. He is troubled by young Fortinbras, and dispatches ambassadors to the sick King of Norway demanding that he suppress the raids of his nephew. His speech to the ambassadors bears the stamp of clear and exact thought and an efficient and confident control of affairs:

. . . and we here dispatch

You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand,

For bearers of this greeting to old Norway;

Giving to you no further personal power

To business with the king, more than the scope

Of these delated articles allow.

Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty. (8-9)

The ambassadors soon return successful. Claudius listens to their reply, receives the King of Norway's letter, and hears that young Fortinbras desires a free pass through Denmark to lead his soldiers against the Poles. Claudius answers:

It likes us well;

And at our more consider'd time we'll read,

Answer, and think upon this business.

Meantime we thank you for your well-took labour:

Go to your rest; at night we'll feast together:

Most welcome home! (31)

Tact has found an easy settlement where arms and opposition might have wasted the strength of Denmark. Notice his reservation of detailed attention when once he knows the main issues are clear; the courteous vet dignified attitude to his subordinates and the true leader's consideration for their comfort; and the invitation to the feast. The impression given by these speeches is one of quick efficiency—the efficiency of the man who can dispose of business without unnecessary circumstance, and so leaves himself time for enjoying the good things of life: a man kindly, confident, and fond of pleasure.

Throughout the first half of the play Claudius is the typical kindly uncle, besides being a good king. His advice to Hamlet about his exaggerated mourning for his father's death is admirable common sense:

Fie! 'Tis a fault to Heaven,

A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,

To reason most absurd; whose common theme

Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,

From the first corse, till he that died to-day,

'This must be so.' (1O)

It is the advice of worldly common sense opposed to the extreme misery of a sensitive nature paralysed by the facts of death and unfaithfulness. This contrast points the relative significance of the King and his court to Hamlet. They are of the world—with their crimes, their follies, their shallownesses, their pomp and glitter; they are of humanity, with all its failings, it is true, but yet of humanity. They assert the importance of human life, they believe in it, in themselves. Whereas Hamlet is inhuman, since he has seen through the tinsel of life and love, he believes in nothing, not even himself, except the memory of a ghost, and his black robed presence is a reminder to everyone of the fact of death. There is no question but that Hamlet is right. The King's smiles hide murder, his mother's love for her new consort is unfaithfulness to Hamlet's father, Ophelia has deserted Hamlet at the hour of his need. Hamlet's philosophy may be inevitable, blameless, and irrefutable. But it is the negation of life. It is death. Hence Hamlet is a continual fear to Claudius, a reminder of his crime. It is a mistake to consider Claudius as a hardened criminal. When Polonius remarks on the hypocrisy of mankind, he murmurs to himself:

O, 'tis too true!

How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!

The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art,

Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it

Than is my deed to my most painted word:

O heavy burthen! (45)

Again, Hamlet's play wrenches his soul with remorse—primarily not fear of Hamlet, as one might expect, but a genuine remorse—and gives us that most beautiful prayer of a stricken soul beginning, 'Oh, my offence is rank, it smells to Heaven' (58-5.9):

... What if this cursed hand

Were thicker than itself with brother's blood,

Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens

To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy

But to confront the visage of offence?

He fears that his prayer is worthless. He is still trammelled by the enjoyment of the fruits of his crime. 'My fault is past,' he cries. But what does that avail, since he has his crown and his queen still, the prizes of murder? His dilemma is profound and raises the problem I am pointing in this essay. Claudius, as he appears in the play, is not a criminal. He is— strange as it may seem—a good and gentle king, enmeshed by the chain of causality linking him with his crime. And this chain he might, perhaps, have broken except for Hamlet, and all would have been well. But, granted the presence of Hamlet—which Claudius at first genuinely desired, persuading him not to return to Wittenberg as he wished—and granted the fact of his original crime which cannot now be altered, Claudius can hardly be blamed for his later actions. They are forced on him. As King, he cold scarcely be expected to do otherwise. Hamlet is a danger to the state, even apart from his knowledge of Claudius' guilt. He is an inhuman—or superhuman—presence, whose consciousness— somewhat like Dostoievsky's Stavrogin—is centred on death. Like Stavrogin, he is feared by those around him. They are always trying in vain to find out what is wrong with him. They cannot understand him. He is a creature of another world. As King of Denmark he would have been a thousand times more dangerous than Claudius. The end of Claudius' prayer is pathetic:

What then? What rests?

Try what repentance can: what can it not?

Yet what can it when one can not repent?

O wretched state! O bosom black as death!

O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,

Art more engaged! Help, angels! make assay!

Bow stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,

Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe!

All may be well.

Set against this lovely prayer—the fine flower of a human soul in anguish—is the entrance of Hamlet, the late joy of torturing the King's conscience still written on his face, his eye a-glitter with the intoxication of conquest, vengeance in his mind; his purpose altered only by the devilish hope of finding a more damning moment in which to slaughter the King, next hastening to his mother to wring her soul too. Which then, at this moment in the play, is nearer the Kingdom of Heaven? Whose words would be more acceptable of Jesus' God? Which is the embodiment of spiritual good, which of evil? The question of the relative morality of Hamlet and Claudius reflects the ultimate problem of this play.

* * *

I have concentrated on Claudius' virtues. They are manifest. So are his faults—his original crime, his skill in the less admirable kind of policy, treachery, and intrigue. But I would point clearly that, in the movement of the play, his faults are forced on him, and he is distinguished by creative and wise action, a sense of purpose, benevolence, a faith in himself and those around him, by love of his Queen:

. . . and for myself—

My virtue or my plague, be it either which—

She's so conjunctive to my life and soul,

That as the star moves not but in his sphere,

I could not but by her. (79)

In short he is very human. Now these are the very qualities Hamlet lacks. Hamlet is inhuman. He has seen through humanity. And this inhuman cynicism, however justifiable in this case on the plane of causality and individual responsibility, is a deadly and venomous thing. Instinctively the creatures of the earth, Laertes, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, league themselves with Claudius: they are of his kind. They sever themselves from Hamlet. Laertes sternly warns Ophelia against her intimacy with Hamlet, so does Polonius. They are, in fact, all leagued against him, they are puzzled by him or fear him: he has no friend except Horatio, and Horatio, after the Ghost scenes, becomes a queer shadowy character who rarely gets beyond 'E'en so, my lord', 'My lord——', and such-like phrases. The other persons are firmly drawn, in the round, creatures of flesh and blood. But Hamlet is not of flesh and blood, he is a spirit of penetrating intellect and cynicism and misery, without faith in himself or anyone else, murdering his love of Ophelia, on the brink of insanity, taking delight in cruelty, torturing Claudius, wringing his mother's heart, a poison in the midst of the healthy bustle of the court. He is a superman among men. And he is a superman because he has walked and held converse with death, and his consciousness works in terms of death and the negation of cynicism. He has seen the truth, not alone of Denmark, but of humanity, of the universe: and the truth is evil. Thus Hamlet is an element of evil in the state of Denmark.

The poison of his mental existence spreads outwards among things of flesh and blood, like acid eating into metal. They are helpless before his very inactivity and fall one after the other, like victims of an infectious disease. They are strong with the strength of health—but the demon of Hamlet's mind is a stronger thing than they. Futilely they try to get him out of their country; anything to get rid of him, he is not safe. But he goes with a cynical smile, and is no sooner gone than he is back again in their midst, meditating in graveyards, at home with death. Not till it has slain all, is the demon that grips Hamlet satisfied. And last it slays Hamlet himself:

The spirit that I have seen

May be the Devil… (43)

It was. It was the devil of the knowledge of death, which possesses Hamlet and drives him from misery and pain to increasing bitterness, cynicism; murder, and madness. He has indeed bought converse with his father's spirit at the price of enduring and spreading Hell on earth. But however much we may sympathize with Ophelia, with Pelonius, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, the Queen, and Claudius, there is one reservation to be made. It is Hamlet who is right. What he says and thinks of them is true, and there is no fault in his logic. His own mother is indeed faithless, and the prettiness of Ophelia does in truth enclose a spirit as

fragile and untrustworthy as her earthly beauty; Polonius is 'a foolish prating knave'; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are time-servers and flatterers; Claudius, whose benevolence hides the guilt of murder, is, by virtue of that fact, 'a damned smiling villain'. In the same way the demon of cynicism which is in the mind of the poet and expresses itself in the figures of this play, has always this characteristic: it is right. One cannot argue with the cynic. It is unwise to offer him battle. For in the warfare of logic it will be found that he has all the guns.

***

Thus Hamlet spends a great part of his time watching, analysing, and probing others. He unhesitatingly lances each in turn in his weakest spot. He is usually quite merciless. But all he actually accomplishes is to torment them all, terrorize them. They are dreadfully afraid of him. Hamlet is so powerful. He is, as it were, the channel of a mysterious force, a force which derives largely from his having seen through them all. In contact with him they know their own faults: neither they nor we should know them otherwise. He exposes faults everywhere. But he is not tragic in the usual Shakespearian sense; there is no surge and swell of passion pressing onward through the play to leave us, as in King Lear, with the mightly crash and backwash of a tragic peace. There is not this direct rhythm in Hamlet—there is no straight course. Instead of being dynamic, the force of Hamlet is, paradoxically, static. Its poison is the poison of negation, nothingness, threatening a world of positive assertion. But even this element is not the whole of Hamlet. He can speak lovingly to his mother at one moment, and the next, in an excess of revulsion, torment her with a withering and brutal sarcasm. One moment he can cry:

I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers

Could not, with all their quantity of love,

Make up my sum. (9O)

Shortly after he scorns himself for this outbreak. His mind reflects swift changes. He may for a moment or two see with the eyes of humour, gentleness, love—then suddenly the whole universe is blackened, goes out, leaves utter vacancy. This is, indeed, the secret of the play's fascination and its lack of unified and concise poetic statement. Hamlet is a dualized personality, wavering, oscillating between grace and the hell of cynicism. The plot reflects this see-saw motion; it lacks direction, pivoting on Hamlet's incertitude, and analysis holds the fascination of giddiness. Nor can Hamlet feel anything passionately for long, since passion implies purpose, and he has no one purpose for any length of time. One element in Hamlet, and that a very important one, is the negation of any passion whatsoever. His disease—or vision—is primarily one of negation, of death. Hamlet is a living death in the midst of life; that is why the play sounds the note of death so strong and sombre at the start. The Ghost was conceived throughout as a portent not kind but sinister. That sepulchral cataclysm at the beginning is the key to the whole play. Hamlet begins with an explosion in the first act; the rest of the play is the reverberation thereof. From the first act onwards Hamlet is, as it were, blackened, scorched by that shattering revelation. The usual process is reversed and the climax is at the start. Hamlet, already in despair, converses early with death.

* * * Finally 'this fell sergeant, death' (99) arrests him too. This is his mysterious strength, ghost-begotten, before which the rest succumb. That is why this play is so rich in death—why its meaning is analysed by Hamlet in soliloquy, why Hamlet is so fascinated by the skulls the Grave-digger unearths; why so many 'casual slaughters' and 'deaths put on by cunning and forced cause' (1O1) disrupt the action, till we are propelled to the last holocaust of mortality and Fortinbras' comment:

This quarry cries on havoc. O proud death, What feast is toward in thine

eternal cell, That thou so many princes at a shot So bloodily hast struck? (1OO)

The Ghost may or may not have been a 'goblin damned'; it certainly was no 'spirit of health' (19). The play ends with a dead march. The action grows out of eternity, closes in it. The ominous discharge of ordnance thus reverberates three times: once, before Hamlet sees the Ghost, and twice in Act v. The eternity of death falls as an abyss at either end, and Hamlet crosses the stage of life aureoled in its ghostly luminance.

(4) Percy Bysshe Shelley, letter to a friend in 1817.

It is impossible to know how far the higher members of the Government are involved in the guilt of their infernal agents. But this much is known, that so soon as the whole nation lifted up its voice for parliamentary reform, spies went forth. These were selected from the most worthless and infamous of mankind, and dispersed among the multitude of famished and illiterate labourers. It was their business to find victims, no matter whether right or wrong.

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), English lyrical poet, critic, and philosopher, whose Lyrical Ballads,(1798) written with William Wordsworth, started the English Romantic movement.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Ottery St Mary, Devonshire, as the youngest son of the vicar of Ottery St Mary. After his father's death Coleridge was sent away to Christ's Hospital School in London. He also studied at Jesus College. In Cambridge Coleridge met the radical, future poet laureate Robert Southey. He moved with Southey to Bristol to establish a community, but the plan failed. In 1795 he married the sister of Southey's fiancée Sara Fricker, whom he did not really love.

Coleridge's collection Poems On Various Subjects was published in 1796, and in 1797 appeared Poems. In the same year he began the publication of a short-lived liberal political periodical The Watchman. He started a close friendship with Dorothy and William Wordsworth, one of the most fruitful creative relationships in English literature. From it resulted Lyrical Ballads, which opened with Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and ended with Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey". These poems set a new style by using everyday language and fresh ways of looking at nature.

The brothers Josiah and Thomas Wedgewood granted Coleridge an annuity of 150 pounds, thus enabling him to pursue his literary career. Disenchanted with political developments in France, Coleridge visited Germany in 1798-99 with Dorothy and William Wordsworth, and became interested in the works of Immanuel Kant. He studied philosophy at Göttingen University and mastered the German language. At the end of 1799 Coleridge fell in love with Sara Hutchinson, the sister of Wordsworth's future wife, to whom he devoted his work "Dejection: An Ode" (1802). During these years Coleridge also began to compile his Notebooks, recording the daily meditations of his life. In 1809-10 he wrote and edited with Sara Hutchinson the literary and political magazine The Friend. From 1808 to 1818 he gave several lectures, chiefly in London, and was considered the greatest of Shakespearean critics. In 1810 Coleridge's friendship with Wordsworth came to a crisis, and the two poets never fully returned to the relationship they had earlier.

Suffering from neuralgic and rheumatic pains, Coleridge had become addicted to opium. During the following years he lived in London, on the verge of suicide. He found a permanent shelter in Highgate in the household of Dr. James Gillman, and enjoyed an almost legendary reputation among the younger Romantics. During this time he rarely left the house.

In 1816 the unfinished poems "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan" were published, and next year appeared "Sibylline Leaves". According to the poet, "Kubla Khan" was inspired by a dream vision. His most important production during this period was the Biographia Literaria(1817). After 1817 Coleridge devoted himself to theological and politico-sociological works. Coleridge was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1824. He died in Highgate, near London on July 25, 1834.

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William Wordsworth (1770-1850), British poet, credited with ushering in the English Romantic Movement with the publication of Lyrical Ballads(1798) in collaboration with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

William Wordsworth was born on April 17, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District. His father was John Wordsworth, Sir James Lowther's attorney. The magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth's imagination and gave him a love of nature. He lost his mother when he was eight and five years later his father. The domestic problems separated Wordsworth from his beloved and neurotic sister Dorothy, who was a very important person in his life.

With the help of his two uncles, Wordsworth entered a local school and continued his studies at Cambridge University. Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787, when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine . In that same year he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, from where he took his B.A. in 1791.

During a summer vacation in 1790 Wordsworth went on a walking tour through revolutionary France and also traveled in Switzerland. On his second journey in France, Wordsworth had an affair with a French girl, Annette Vallon, a daughter of a barber-surgeon, by whom he had a illegitimate daughter Anne Caroline. The affair was basis of the poem "Vaudracour and Julia", but otherwise Wordsworth did his best to hide the affair from posterity.

In 1795 he met Coleridge. Wordsworth's financial situation became better in 1795 when he received a legacy and was able to settle at Racedown, Dorset, with his sister Dorothy.
Encouraged by Coleridge and stimulated by the close contact with nature, Wordsworth composed his first masterwork, Lyrical Ballads, which opened with Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner." About 1798 he started to write a large and philosophical autobiographical poem, completed in 1805, and published posthumously in 1850 under the title The Prelude.

Wordsworth spent the winter of 1798-99 with his sister and Coleridge in Germany, where he wrote several poems, including the enigmatic 'Lucy' poems. After return he moved Dove Cottage, Grasmere, and in 1802 married Mary Hutchinson. They cared for Wordsworth's sister Dorothy for the last 20 years of her life.

Wordsworth's second verse collection, Poems, In Two Volumes, appeared in 1807. Wordsworth's central works were produced between 1797 and 1808. His poems written during middle and late years have not gained similar critical approval. Wordsworth's Grasmere period ended in 1813. He was appointed official distributor of stamps for Westmoreland. He moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside, where he spent the rest of his life. In later life Wordsworth abandoned his radical ideas and became a patriotic, conservative public man.

In 1843 he succeeded Robert Southey (1774-1843) as England's poet laureate. Wordsworth died on April 23, 1850.

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Men, Women, and the Byron-Complex

"In the nonacademic world of letters no one, apparently, either knows or cares whether Byron was a great poet. After a hundred years, the sole question that impassions people is: 'Just how much of a cad was he?'"
by Katherine Fullerton Gerould

Ninety-eight years ago, in April, Lord Byron died at Missolonghi. Astarte has, within the year, been publicly reissued; two volumes of new Byron letters have been put forth by John Murray within a few months. It is natural that the files of the recent British reviews should be full of him. Natural, indeed, that ever since 1905 (when Lord Lovelace first made his extraordinary gesture of publication), any index of periodical literature should have been studded with Byron's name.

Yet out of all the welter of articles and essays resultant upon Astarte and the new Letters, one curious fact emerges, dominant, obtrusive. As it was through all the nineteenth century, so now in the twentieth. None of the recent critics (unless it be Lord Ernle) cares a hang about Byron's poetry, or his prose. Mr. Percy Lubbock says frankly, too frankly, if that be his real opinion, that everyone will read the Hobhouse collection of letters with only one purpose: to see if anything new can be gathered about the Byron-Augusta scandal. There is nothing new about Byron and Augusta in the Hobhouse collection, and therefore it is worth nothing. We would give it all for a slim volume of Keats's letters. Thus Mr. Lubbock. Mr. Maurice Hewlett, reviewing the volumes in the London Mercury, never hints at whether or not they sustain Byron's reputation as one of the great English letter-writers. He uses his three pages to vilify Byron the man, as far as his vocabulary will allow. After a hundred years, one ought to be able to consider a man's poetry on its merit. But in the nonacademic world of letters no one, apparently, either knows or cares whether Byron was a great poet. No one except Lord Ernle either knows or cares, as we have said, whether he was a better or a worse letter-writer than we had thought. After a hundred years, the sole question that impassions people is: 'Just how much of a cad was he?'

One looks in vain for another instance quite like this. Lord Byron was not a king, not a great warrior or a great statesman; he was not the leader of a cause, the founder of a party, the winner or loser of a battlefield. His one adventure into public affairs the espousing of the Greek cause came late, and amounted to little. He was never, to any group of enthusiasts, a symbol; his name was never the equivalent of a theory or an ideal. He 'stood for' nothing, and therefore gathered no loyalties about him like a borrowed garment.

His poetry and his personality were all that he had to make him significant. Scandal about Shelley has never been wanting; and we have recently acquired a scandal (God save the mark!) about Wordsworth. Yet people go on estimating the Lyrical Ballads and Prometheus Unbound much as they did before. Critics, however, persist still in abandoning criticism when they speak of Byron. You search their pages for any hint that he wrote Lara, The Bride of Abydos, or The Giaour; and when they mention Don Juan, their sole interest seems to lie in being able to name the woman he was living with when he produced a particular canto. The sequence of his works serves as a mere corroborative footnote to the chronique scandaleuse of his life.

Scandals a hundred years old usually lack spice for anyone save the antiquary. But, though no one since Matthew Arnold, except Paul Elmer More, has bothered much about Byron's poetry, they are bothering still about Lord Byron and his amours. One would think he was a sufficiently great poet to be spoken of as such. Or Mr. Lubbock or Mr. Hewlett¡ªsince they were supposed to be reviewing the Murray volumes might have thrown in a word or two about Byron's letters, which, as letters, are among the best we have. But no: Byron still arouses an emotion purely personal. People persist in taking him as if he were the defendant in a criminal suit. They are as passionately partisan as if he had not, for years, been dust beneath the stones of Hucknall Torkard church.

This cannot be mere love of scandal; because, as we have said, scandal about other Romantic poets Shelley or Wordsworth leaves people able, still, to estimate them as poets. Certainly it is not natural preoccupation with great figures of English literature because they care nothing about 'placing' Byron's work in the magnificent sequence of English verse. No: they are simply squabbling over George Gordon, the sixth Lord Byron; adoring or detesting him precisely as did those people who stood by him, or cold-shouldered him, at Lady Jersey's famous party. The simple fact is this: no woman has ever been able to keep her head about Byron; and now that he is dead, the men seem to be as bad as the women. What other private personality, in our Anglo-Saxon world, has ever been so persistent as this?

It is easy to find excuses: easy to say that Harriet Beecher Stowe, in 1869 (for she was the first cause of most of the modern talk), kindled the dying embers, and lit such a candle as, she trusted, should never be put out; easy to say that Lord Lovelace had a grandmother-complex, and felt constrained to produce the worst-written book of the century to vilify his grandfather. Even Lord Lovelace and Mrs. Stowe, who were two as good Byron-haters as you can find anywhere but we shall come to that later. Easy to say that the controversy over Byron and Augusta dealt (to put it mildly) with peculiarly intriguing possibilities. Yet one must remember that, as Professor Strahan has just pointed out, at the time when Byron left England for Continental exile, there was sympathy abroad for Byron and none for Shelley, and that probably his going to the Shelleys was the coup de grace to Byron's reputation. In the minds of the British public, that is, even after the separation, Byron was a sinner, but Shelley was scum. There is something there, other than scandal, other, even, than monstrosity of scandal to account for this clamor that bursts out, even to-day, about Byron both for and against him on the slightest excuse.

That something is personality. Byron is so real, so vivid, so persistent, as a human being, that you cannot down him. Lucian makes Diogenes in Hades greet Alexander with: 'Dear me, Alexander, you dead like the rest of us?' Byron is not dead like the rest of them. He evokes the same kind of adoration, of contempt, of loyalty, that he would evoke if he walked down Piccadilly to-day. People either shed tears over him or spit when his name is mentioned. At least, Mr. Hewitt, K.C., is not far from tears; and Mr. Hewlett's pages come as near the gesture of expectoration as print can come.

No woman, I said earlier, has ever been able to keep her head about Byron, living or dead. Miss E. C. Mayne, in her two-voume life, comes fairly near it; yet even Miss Mayne lapses from the judicial temper. Being a woman, I should not attempt, myself, to weigh evidence that concerned Byron. It is unfortunate that the man who had access to more facts about him than anyone else Lord Lovelace, namely should have been as incapable of either assembling, presenting, or weighing evidence, as any woman. For some years, I have hoped that some man with a judicial mind and an urbane temper would come forward and do us a new book about Byron. But one is constrained to believe that even men encounter a peculiar difficulty in dealing with him. Miss Mayne warns the women 'who are in love with Byron's ghost' that the Byron they love is the Byron his male friends saw and knew, and that, if they had known him in the flesh, they would have fared no better than Annabella Milbanke or Caroline Lamb. That will not prevent women from being in love with Byron's ghost, or even from writing love-letters to it. All women who have ever been in love with Byron are disqualified, naturally. But, curiously enough, the people who are not in love with him are equally disqualified.

I do not know who was editing the Atlantic Monthly in 1869. [See endnote*] The gentleman is presumably dead, and lovers of literature, it is to be hoped, are not carrying flowers to his grave. He moulders with the man who, in the North American Review, emptied the vials of his scorn on Edward Coate Pinkney. Shelley would say that, wherever they are, they are with Gifford. It is almost impossible, you see, not to mention Mrs. Stowe in the Byron connection, not only because she 'started' everything, but because she proves, more amusingly even than Lord Lovelace himself, or the crew now writing about Byron in British reviews, the point we were making. Yet Mrs. Stowe, as the authoress of Lady Byron Vindicated (her elaboration and defense, in 1870, of her Atlantic and Macmillan performance of 1869), is not to be mentioned without preliminary apology¡ªan exculpatory washing of hands. Permit me, therefore, before discussing Mrs. Stowe's discreditable publication, to quote Swinburne's footnote about it. The whole paragraph of the footnote (from the Essays and Studies) must be set down, I fear. To set down less would be like not washing one's hands enough.
The worst consequence...was not the collapse of such faint hopes or surmises as we might yet have cherished of some benefit to be received in the way of biography, some new and kindly light to be thrown on the life and character of Byron; it was the opportunity given to a filthy female moralist and novelist, who was not slow to avail herself of such an occasion to expound her beastly mind to all. Evidently the laurels of Mrs. Behn had long kept her successor from sleeping; it was not enough to have copied the authoress of Oroonoko in the selection of a sable and a servile hero; her American imitator was bent on following her down fouler ways than this. But I feel that an apology is due to the virtuous memory of the chaste Aphra: she was indeed the first 'nigger novelist'; and she was likewise a vendor and purveyor of obscene fiction; but here the parallel ends; for I am not aware that she ever applied her unquestionable abilities in that unlovely line of business to the defamation at second-hand of the illustrious and defenseless dead.
Swinburne, as you see, kept his head no better than the rest of us; yet, considering the enormity of Mrs. Stowe's offense against taste, both public and private,¡ªwhich no one felt so keenly as Lord Lovelace himself,¡ªwho can say that something of the kind was not deserved?

The whole point about Mrs. Stowe, for most of us, is not her inaccuracy or her egregious breach of faith, about which Lady Byron's grandson was so bitter and contemptuous, nor yet the fact that she was ultimately responsible for Lord Lovelace's impotent volume; not even the gusto with which (though that is somewhat overrated by Swinburne) she set herself, with unctuous explicitness, to blacken the poet's character. Let us be temperate about Mrs. Stowe and admit that, while her position was contemptible, her purpose was not, like Mrs. Behn's, pornographic. The interesting fact, for us, as I say, is other.

Here is your official Byron-hater, speaking officially. She had worn Lady Byron's own gloves, and considered Lady Byron the greatest Englishwoman of the century, if not of all time. Lady Byron's devoted grandson had fewer illusions about her. Part of Mrs. Stowe's purpose, according to herself, is to dissuade men and women from reading Lord Byron's remarkable poetry. She hopes, in blasting his personal reputation, to destroy his poetical popularity as well. Reading Byron's poetry, in her opinion, is one of the easiest descents into hell. Mrs. Stowe, it must be said, does not ignore the poetry, like so many of our contemporary commentators. She thinks it magnificent, and refers to her own youth, when young men and maidens chanted his verse with ecstasy. But now that she has held Lady Byron's hand, and heard 'the truth' about Augusta, she would prevent anyone else from being similarly inspired.

Yet even Mrs. Stowe attempts to palliate Byron s crimes.
Ancestral causes had sent him into the world with a most perilous and exceptional sensitiveness of brain and nervous system, which it would have required the most judicious course of education to direct safely or happily¡. Byron's physical organization was originally as fine and as sensitive as that of the most delicate woman. He possessed the faculty of moral ideality in a high degree, and he had not, in the earlier part of his life, an attraction towards mere brutal vice.... In considering his subsequent history, we are to take into account that it was upon the brain and nerve-power, thus exhausted by early excess, that the draughts of sudden and rapid literary composition began to be made. There was something unnatural and unhealthy in the rapidity, clearness, and vigor with which his various works followed each other....

There still remains undoubted evidence that Byron exercised a most peculiar and fatal power over the moral sense of the women with whom he was brought in relation; and that love for him, in many women, became a sort of insanity, depriving them of the just use of their faculties.
And she inclines, if not to be convinced, to be much struck, by the following statement of Lady Byron's:¡ª
I could not but conclude that he (Lord Byron) was a believer in the inspiration of the Bible, and had the gloomiest Calvanistic tenets. To that unhappy view of the relation of the creature to the Creator aways ascribed the misery of his life.... I, like all connected with him, was broken against the rock of predestination.
The last two quotations are from Mrs. Stowe's chapter entitled, 'How Could She Love Him?' It is quite clear that Mrs. Stowe saw perfectly how Lady Byron could love him; and she is obviously much taken (though from anyone but Lady Byron, one gathers, it would have shocked her) with the pretty theory that 'the truth about Augusta,' like everything else, was ultimately John Calvin's fault. Lady Byron, on her first meeting with Mrs. Stowe, told her that she (Mrs. Stowe) could have understood him. One rather doubts that Mrs. Stowe could have understood Byron; one is fairly sure that Byron would not have thought that she understood him; but one realizes that the compliment was by no means distasteful to her. Read Lady Byron Vindicated from cover to cover, and you will see that even Mrs. Stowe was not unaffected by the Byron complex. To be sure, she alone among his posthumous detractors seems not to have forgotten that he was a great poet¡ªeven if she does sympathize with Lady Byron's horror at his poems being made accessible to larger numbers of people by grace of a cheap edition. That, you will remember, is why (according to Mrs. Stowe) Lady Byron 'spoke out.' This loving woman was afraid that her husband's poetry would be more widely read.

But of course Lady Byron's psychology is a muddle and a mess, and Lord Lovelace, devoting his hundreds of pages to defending her, has made the poor woman more incredible and unpalatable than ever. A good many of us were at peace with Lady Byron until we read Astarte. No one can read Lady Lovelace's memoir of her husband without sympathy for him. He walked for years in the shadow of his grandparents. To clear his grandmother from accusations of coldness and moral cruelty he wrote his book,¡ªhaving brooded on the subject the better part of his life,¡ªsacrificing his grandfather completely. Better that Byron should be called immoral than that Lady Byron should be called unfeeling! No one could accuse Lord Lovelace of 1oving his grandfather. He brushes aside the poetry, except as he thinks it serves to prove his scandalous point. Yet Lord Lovelace judges it well to remind us that there were extenuating circumstances in Byron's 'affair' with Augusta. And having explained, as well as he could, why this was not like other cases, he proceeds, in one of the most remarkable pages ever penned (when you consider that he is a special pleader on the other side), to declare that, ideally speaking, Augusta should have gone to Byron on the Continent, after the separation; that they should have flaunted their relation (as he conceives it to have been) in the eyes of Europe, cutting themselves off from every civilized contact (for every civilized community, he is convinced, no matter how remote, would have spewed them out); since then Byron would have been a truly poetical and sympathetic figure. Then we could have loved him. Even Lord Lovelace finds no evidence that Augusta ever wished to go to Byron; but that does not matter. She should have sacrificed herself, her husband; her children, her soul; she should have chucked everything and gone, so that we might love Byron whose poetry, according to Lord Lovelace, was not of much account.

No: the world certainly has a Byron-complex.

Professor Strahan paints us a vivid picture of Byron's departure from England, after the scandal of the separation:
Crowds had watched his departure from Piccadilly for Dover; at his hotel at Dover women of position bribed the chamber maids to let them take over their clothes and duties for the evening, so that they might have a near look at the interesting monster; and the next day practically the whole town turned out to see him go to the packet. The same intense curiosity followed him to the end. At Venice, when he crossed in his gondola for his customary ride on the sands of the Lido, all the English visitors in Venice were waiting at San Nicolo to view his landing, some of the women using opera glasses, and some pressing so close that he had occasionally to push his way through them in order to mount his horse. His love of Ravenna was largely due to the fact that the absence of English people saved him from constant mobbing; but when he was going from that city to Pisa, and broke his journey for a night or so at Bologna, Rogers, who was there, told Macaulay that, when he left the hotel, every window in it was crammed with English sightseers.
No bribing of chambermaids today would get us a glimpse of Byron, so it is easy to laugh at the poor ladies who made that rather unseemly gesture. But the attitude mutatis mutandis has persisted. He is a person, still. When Mrs. Stowe a young thing, then heard that Byron was dead, she went off and climbed a hill, to be alone all the afternoon with her thoughts of him. Later, she wanted his poetry annihilated, for moral reasons; but she could revert with tenderness to her own gesture of mourning. Mrs. Stowe is long since dead; but these people who are at present concerned with Byron are very like the ladies who bribed the chambermaids. Mr. Hewlett, Mr. Lubbock, and many others are not reading Byron; but they are craning their necks from balconies for glimpses of the man.

I have said more than once, that no woman, friend or foe, can to this day quite keep her head about Byron. I still, believe that is true. But one woman I have encountered who came very near it. Several years ago I made pilgrimage, like so many others, to Newstead Abbey. The housekeeper, rather bored, did the honors. It dawned upon the woman at last that here were Americans who cared little for Dukeries but a great deal for the poet. Nothing could mitigate her austerity; but she faced us finally in the drawing-room, cluttered with the possessions of the alien owners, and coldly, primly remarked: 'It is a great pity that Lord Byron did not marry Mary Chaworth, and settle down and keep up the place.' For her, Byron was simply a landed gentleman who had neglected his duty.

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The story of Keats's illness and death cannot be told without reference to the life of Joseph Severn. Severn, an ambitious and kindly young painter, was Keats's companion and nurse during his last months of life. And afterwards he remained a true friend, determined to enshrine the memory of Keats's talent and courageous spirit in the popular imagination. Severn's own behavior during those long, sad months in Rome was exemplary. He and Keats had known one another in England, but they were only passing acquaintances. Keats was far closer to Hunt, Brown, Reynolds, and Haydon; but it was Severn who agreed to accompany him to Rome when all others could, or would, not. And it was Severn who recorded the slow decline of his friend's health and spirits in Rome, the city which was supposed to rescue his health but instead became his final resting-place.

Severn was twenty-six when he accompanied Keats to Rome on board the Maria Crowther. Just a year before, he had won the coveted gold medal of the Royal Academy for his painting 'The Cave of Despair', inspired by Spenser's Faerie Queen. He was from a close-knit and successful middle-class family and already popular within the artistic circles of London. He had been chosen as Keats's companion just three days before the Maria Crowther sailed from England. And though he was popular within London, Severn was also regarded as something of an intellectual light-weight; his sunny disposition and innate cheerfulness made him seem naive and immature. In truth, he was simply a kind and humorous young man. And though he was dedicated to his own artistic career, he saw no reason to alter his nature simply to appear more 'serious' and 'intellectual'. Keats's friends did not think he would be a fit companion for the poet, lacking the personality to support such a gifted and brilliant man. But a more perfect companion than Severn cannot be imagined. As all of Keats's friends would readily admit years later, his care for Keats revealed hidden depths of strength and substance in Severn. I should mention that Keats's last weeks in England were spent in Kentish Town, in rooms found by Leigh Hunt and paid for by Charles Brown, but many of his afternoons were spent walking the Heath with Severn. Keats's increasing melancholy, created by his illness and jealous brooding over Fanny Brawne, was evident but did not disturb Severn unduly. He certainly felt comfortable enough to later accept the position as companion.

Keats's closest friends were unable to accompany him for various reasons. Leigh Hunt, with a tubercular wife, several children, and a mountain of debt, had perhaps the best excuses. Most others were worn down to a repeated mantra - they were too busy to take six months or more out of their lives to accompany Keats to Italy. Severn, though not a member of the intimate circle of Keats's friends, was still well-known enough to be mentioned as a potential companion. Also, as an artist, Severn longed to visit Italy; the Piazza di Spagna area where he and Keats eventually settled was known as the 'English ghetto' because of the many foreign artists living and studying there. Fresh from his triumph at the Royal Academy, Severn was eager to study the great Italian masters, to be inspired by the beautiful landscapes of Italy. And the gold medal allowed him to apply for a traveling fellowship - three years of artistic freedom paid for by the Royal Academy. To receive this grant, Severn needed to paint an original oil and ship it to London. Once the painting was approved by a panel of judges, he would receive the precious fellowship. Since Rome was the art capital of Europe, it made sense to travel there, and even more sense to travel with Keats. Severn had long admired the young poet, only 24 when they set out and already the published author of three books of poems.

And so Severn accepted the invitation with eagerness and a bit of trepidation; both emotions were understandable. There was a tense confrontation with his father when his plans became known. The elder Severn thought his son was risking his career and health by traveling with Keats and ordered him to remain in England. Severn refused. Hastily packed, he embarked on a voyage of convalescence, or so he believed. Keats's doctors had assured him that a stay in Rome would cure his condition; whether Keats believed this is debatable, but Severn certainly did - at least until the actual voyage. The two men were forced to share quarters with another consumptive, a Miss Cotterell, who was also traveling to Italy for her health. She was the classic tubercular patient, wasted, weak, and glassy-eyed, pale but with a feverish blush on her cheeks and racked by a brutal cough. In contrast, Keats was still not diagnosed as consumptive and often seemed the picture of health. It was only a week or so into the voyage that Severn began to suspect the truth. Keats, for all of his outward signs of bonhomie, grew feverish during the night, coughed hard and brought up blood. Perhaps most disturbing to the gregarious and cheerful Severn, Keats's physical anguish was consuming him mentally. He often stood by himself, staring silently over the dark water. As Severn wrote, 'He was often so distraught, with moreover so sad a look in his eyes, sometimes a starved, haunting expression that it bewildered me.'

Poor Severn was torn. He regarded Keats with something approaching awe, well aware of the younger man's talent - aware, too, that a few London friends thought he may become a rival to Shakespeare. But during the voyage Severn found Keats withdrawn and difficult to reach. The silence reminded Severn of the lack of true friendship between the men. Yet the silence was better than Keats's sudden and unexpected outpouring of feeling when they arrived at Naples. Suddenly, Severn became aware of another reason for Keats's mental anguish - it wasn't simply his ill health, it was also an ill-fated love affair with a young woman in London named Fanny Brawne. Severn knew of Fanny and Keats's flirtations with her, but he did not know that she and Keats were engaged. The engagement was known only to Fanny's mother, who had helped nurse the poet in London.

The first night in Naples found both Severn and Keats writing letters home. Severn interrupted his, to a friend named William Haslam, when Keats wished to talk again. There are oblique references in Severn's letter of Keats's 'heavy grief', but nothing more. The conversation soothed Keats but gave Severn fresh cause for concern. Keats's own state of mind can be further guessed by reading his letter from that evening, to Charles Brown. It is clear that he was thinking only of Fanny Brawne, and she was undoubtedly the focus of his conversation with Severn.

Keats's confessions made Severn believe that the poet's problems were caused as much by love as physical disease. This opinion was already shared by Keats's friends and doctor, and indeed Keats himself believed it. In the text of the letter to Brown, Keats had written: 'My dear Brown, I should have had her when I was in health, and I should have remained well'. Interestingly, Keats also believed his younger brother Tom had died as much from a broken heart as consumption. The power of love in Keats's universe was thus life-altering, and life-threatening. This belief gave Severn some optimism since heartache was not as alarming as consumption. But he was disturbed by the intensity of Keats's feelings, and how they affected his health.

This sketch was made by Joseph Severn as he watched over the dying poet at 26 Piazza di Spagna, Rome.

The inscription at the bottom is in Severn's hand, and reads (in partial shorthand):

'28 Janry 3 o'clock mng. Drawn to keep me awake - a deadly sweat was on him all this night.'

Keats passed away on Friday, 23 February 1821, around 11:00 pm. This is the last known portrait of the poet.

Severn announced Keats's death to Charles Brown in a letter dated 27 February 1821:

Rome. 27 February 1821.

My dear Brown,

He is gone--he died with the most perfect ease--he seemed to go to sleep. On the 23^rd, about 4, the approaches of death came on. "Severn-I--lift me up--I am dying--I shall die easy--don't be frightened--be firm, and thank God it has come!" I lifted him up in my arms. The phlegm seemed boiling in his throat, and increased until 11, when he gradually sunk into death--so quiet-that I still thought he slept. I cannot say now-I am broken down from four nights' watching, and no sleep since, and my poor Keats gone. Three days since, the body was opened; the lungs were completely gone. The Doctors could not conceive by what means he had lived these two months. I followed his poor body to the grave on Monday, with many English. They take such care of me here--that I must, else, have gone into a fever. I am better now--but still quite disabled.

The Police have been. The furniture, the walls, the floor, every thing must be destroyed by order of the law. But this is well looked to by D^r C.

The letters I put into the coffin with my own hand.

I must leave off.

J. S.

This goes by the first post. Some of my kind friends would have written else. I will try to write you every thing next post; or the Doctor will.

They had a mask--and hand and foot done--

I cannot get on--

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John Keats (1795-1891)* (12)

This Living Hand, Now Warm (1819?)

And Capable

This living hand, now warm and capable

Of earnest grasping. Would. if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb,

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again.

.And thou be conscience-calmed--see here it is--

I hold it towards you.

Enjoying "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", by John Keats
by Ed Friedlander, M.D.
scalpel_blade@yahoo.com

This pursued through volumes might take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

-- Keats (Dec. 21, 1817)

I'm a physician and medical school teacher in real life. I've liked Keats since I was in high school. Generally I enjoy the classics because they say what most of us have thought, but much more clearly.

The real John Keats is far more interesting than the languid aesthete of popular myth. Keats was born in 1795, the son of a stable attendant. As a young teen, he was extroverted, scrappy, and liked fistfighting. In 1810 he became an apprentice to an apothecary-surgeon, and in 1815 he went to medical school at Guy's Hospital in London. In 1816, although he could have been licensed to prepare and sell medicines, he chose to devote his life entirely to writing poetry.

In 1818, Keats took a walking tour of the north of England and Scotland, and nursed his brother Tom during his fatal episode of tuberculosis.

By 1819, Keats realized that he, too, had tuberculosis. If you believe that most adult TB is from reactivation of a childhood infection, then he probably caught it from his mother. If you believe (as I do) that primary progressive TB is common, then he may well have caught it from Tom. Or it could have come from anybody. TB was common in Keats's era.

Despite his illness and his financial difficulties, Keats wrote a tremendous amount of great poetry during 1819, including "La Belle Dame Sans Merci".

On Feb. 3, 1820, Keats went to bed feverish and feeling very ill. He coughed, and noticed blood on the sheet. His friend Charles Brown looked at the blood with him. Keats said, "I know the color of that blood; it is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived. That drop of blood is my death warrant." (Actually, TB is more likely to invade veins than arteries, but the blood that gets coughed up turns equally red the instant it contacts oxygen in the airways. The physicians of Keats's era confused brown, altered blood with "venous blood", and fresh red blood with "arterial blood".) Later that night he had massive hemoptysis.

Seeking a climate that might help him recover, he left England for Italy in 1820, where he died of his tuberculosis on Feb. 23, 1821. His asked that his epitaph read, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

Percy Shelley, in "Adonais", for his own political reasons, claimed falsely that bad reviews of Keats's poems (Blackwoods, 1817) had caused Keats's death. Charles Brown referred to Keats's "enemies" on Keats's tombstone to get back at those who had cared for him during his final illness. And so began the nonsense about Keats, the great poet of sensuality and beauty, being a sissy and a crybaby.

There is actually much of the modern rock-and-roll star in Keats. His lyrics make sense, he tried hard to preserve his health, and he found beauty in the simplest things rather than in drugs (which were available in his era) or wild behavior. But in giving in totally to the experiences and sensations of the moment, without reasoning everything out, Keats could have been any of a host of present-day radical rockers.

O for a Life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts! It is a "Vision in the form of Youth" a shadow of reality to come and this consideration has further convinced me... that we shall enjoy ourselves here after having what we called happiness on Earth repeated in a finer tone and so repeated. And yet such a fate can only befall those who delight in Sensation rather than hunger as you do after Truth.

-- Keats to Benjamin Bailey, Nov. 22, 1817

If you are curious to learn more about Keats, you'll find he was tough, resilient, and likeable.

"La Belle Dame Sans Merci" exists in two versions. The first was the original one penned by Keats on April 21, 1819. The second was altered (probably at the suggestion of Leigh Hunt, and you might decide mostly for the worse) for its publication in Hunt's Indicator on May 20, 1819.

Manuscript

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

III

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful - a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.

VII

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said -
'I love thee true'.

VIII

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep
And there I dreamed - Ah! woe betide! -
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried - 'La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!'

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.

XII

And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Published

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

III

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful - a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery's song.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

VII

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew;
And sure in language strange she said -
'I love thee true.'

VIII

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she gazed, and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
So kiss'd to sleep.

And there we slumber'd on the moss,
And there I dream'd - Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried - 'La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!'

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill side.

XII

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

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The Story

The poet meets a knight by a woodland lake in late autumn. The man has been there for a long time, and is evidently dying.

The knight says he met a beautiful, wild-looking woman in a meadow. He visited with her, and decked her with flowers. She did not speak, but looked and sighed as if she loved him. He gave her his horse to ride, and he walked beside them. He saw nothing but her, because she leaned over in his face and sang a mysterious song. She spoke a language he could not understand, but he was confident she said she loved him. He kissed her to sleep, and fell asleep himself.

He dreamed of a host of kings, princes, and warriors, all pale as death. They shouted a terrible warning -- they were the woman's slaves. And now he was her slave, too.

Awakening, the woman was gone, and the knight was left on the cold hillside.

Notes

"La Belle Dame Sans Merci" means "the beautiful woman without mercy." It's the title of an old French court poem by Alain Chartier. ("Merci" in today's French is of course "thank you".) Keats probably knew a current translation which was supposed to be by Chaucer. In Keats's "Eve of Saint Agnes", the lover sings this old song as he is awakening his beloved.

"Wight" is an archaic name for a person. Like most people, I prefer "knight at arms" to "wretched wight", and obviously the illustrators of the poem did, too. ("Until I met her, I was a man of action!")

"Sedge" is any of several grassy marsh plants which can dominate a wet meadow.

"Fever dew" is the sweat (diaphoresis) of sickness. Keats originally wrote "death's lily" and "death's rose", and he refers to the flush and the pallor of illness. If the poet can actually see the normal red color leaving the cheeks of the knight, then the knight must be going rapidly into shock, i.e., the poet has come across the knight right as he is dying, and is recording his last words. (The knight is too enwrapped in his own experience to notice.)

Medieval fairies (dwellers in the realm of faerie) were usually human-sized, though Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream allowed them (by negative capability) to be sometimes-diminutive.

"Sidelong" means sideways. A "fragrant zone" is a flower belt. "Elfin" means "pertaining to the elves", or the fairy world. A "grot" is of course a grotto. "Betide" means "happen", and "woe betide" is a more romantical version of the contemporary expression "---- happens". "Gloam" means gloom. A "thrall" is an abject slave.

The Poem's Inspiration

Keats had a voluminous correspondence, and we can reconstruct the events surrounding the writing of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci". He wrote the poem on April 21, 1819. It appears in the course of a letter to his brother George, usually numbered 123. You may enjoy looking this up to see how he changed the poem even while he was writing it.

At the time, Keats was very upset over a hoax that had been played on his brother Tom, who was deceived in a romantic liaison. He was also undecided about whether to enter into a relationship with Fanny Brawne, who he loved but whose friends disapproved of the possible match with Keats.

Shortly before the poem was written, Keats recorded a dream in which he met a beautiful woman in a magic place which turned out to be filled with pallid, enslaved lovers.

Just before the poem was written, Keats had read Spenser's account of the false Florimel, in which an enchantress impersonates a heroine to her boyfriend, and then vanishes.

All these experiences probably went into the making of this powerful lyric.

In the letter, Keats followed the poem with a chuckle.

Why four kisses -- you will way -- why four? Because I wish to restrain the headlong impetuosity of my Muse -- she would have fain said "score" without hurting the rhyme -- but we must temper the imagination as the critics say with judgment. I was obliged to choose an even number that both eyes might have fair play: and to speak truly I think two apiece quite sufficient. Suppose I had said seven; there would have been three and a half apiece -- a very awkward affair -- and well got out of on my side --

Keats's Themes

John Keats's major works do not focus on religion, ethics, morals, or politics. He mostly just writes about sensations and experiencing the richness of life.

In his On Melancholy, Keats suggests that if you want to write sad poetry, don't try to dull your senses, but focus on intense experience (not even always pleasant -- peonies are nice, being b_tched out by your girlfriend isn't), and remember that all things are transient. Only a poet can really savor the sadness of that insight.

In Lamia, a magic female snake falls in love with a young man, and transforms by magic into a woman. They live together in joy, until a well-intentioned scholar ruins the lovers' happiness by pointing out that it's a deception. Until the magic spell is broken by the voice of reason and science, they are both sublimely happy. It invites comparison with "La Belle Dame Sans Merci".

Richard Dawkins took a line from "Lamia" for the title of his book, Unweaving the Rainbow, against the familiar (romantic?) complaints that studying nature (as it really is) makes you less appreciative of the world's beauty. (I agree with Dawkins. I haven't found that being scientific spoils anybody's appreciation of beauty. -- Ed.)

In On a Grecian Urn, Keats admires a moment of beauty held forever in a work of art. The eternal moment, rather than the stream of discursive, rational thought, led Keats to conclude, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty -- that is all you know, or ever need to know."

To a Nightingale recounts Keats's being enraptured (by a singing bird) out of his everyday reality. He stopped thinking and reasoning for a while, and after the experience was over, he wondered which state of consciousness was the real one and which was the dream.

To Autumn is richly sensual, and contrasts the joys of autumn to the more-poetized joys of spring. Keats was dying at the time, and as in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", Keats is probably describing, on one level, his own final illness -- a time of completion, consummation, and peace.

Ask your instructor about Keats's "pleasure thermometer". The pleasure of nature and music gives way to the pleasure of sexuality and romance which in turn give way to the pleasure of visionary dreaming.

What's It All About?

Keats focuses on how experiencing beauty gives meaning and value to life. In "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", Keats seems to be telling us about something that may have happened, or may happen someday, to you.

You discover something that you think you really like. You don't really understand it, but you're sure it's the best thing that's ever happened to you. You are thrilled. You focus on it. You give in to the beauty and richness and pleasure, and let it overwhelm you.

Then the pleasure is gone. Far more than a normal letdown, the experience has left you crippled emotionally. At least for a while, you don't talk about regretting the experience. And it remains an important part of who you feel that you are.

Drug addiction (cocaine, heroin, alcohol) is what comes to my mind first. We've all known addicts who've tasted the pleasures, then suffered the health, emotional, and personal consequences. Yet I've been struck by how hard it is to rehabilitate these people, even when hope seems to be gone. They prefer to stagnate.

Vampires were starting to appear in literature around Keats's time, and the enchantress of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" is one of a long tradition of supernatural beings who have charmed mortals into spiritual slavery. Bram Stoker's "Dracula" got much of its bite from the sexuality and seductiveness of the vampire lord.

Failed romantic relationships (ended romances, marriages with the love gone) account for an astonishing number of suicides. Rather than giving up and moving on, men and women find themselves disabled, but not expressing sorrow that the relationship occurred.

Ideologies bring enormous excitement and happiness to new believers. They offer camaraderie and the thrill of thinking that you are intellectually and morally superior and about to change the world for the better. Members of both the Goofy Right and the Goofy Left seemed very happy on my college campus, and I've seen the satisfaction that participation in ideological movements brings people ever since. People who leave these movements (finding out that the movements are founded on lies) are often profoundly saddened and lonely.

Religious emotionalism can have an enormous impact, and some lives are permanently changed for the better at revivals. But some people who have come upon a faith commitment emotionally find themselves devastated when the emotions fade, and become unable to function even at their old level.

The Vilia is a Celtic woodland spirit, celebrated by Lehar and Ross in a love song from "The Merry Widow", 1905. The song itself was popular during the 1950's. The song deals with a common human experience -- never being able to recover the first ardor of love. The show itself celebrates that peole CAN find love again.

There once was a VIlia, a witch of the wood,
A hunter beheld her alone as she stood,
The spell of her beauty upon him was laid;
He looked and he longed for the magical maid!
For a sudden tremor ran,
Right through the love bwildered man,
And he sighed as a hapless lover can.
Vilia, O Vilia! the witch of the wood!
Would I not die for you, dear, if I could?
Vilia, O Vilia, my love and my bride,
Softly and sadly he sighed.

The wood maiden smiled and no answer she gave,
But beckoned him into the shade of the cave,
He never had known such a rapturous bliss,
No maiden of mortals so sweetly can kiss!
As before her feet he lay,
She vanished in the wood away,
And he called vainly till his dying day!
Vilia, O Vilia, my love and my bride!
Softly and sadly he sighed, Sadly he sighed, "Vilia."

Vilia -- organ chorded version
Vilia -- Chet Atkins, jazzier guitar version

Beauty itself, fully appreciated (as only a poet can), must by its impermanence devastate a person. Or so wrote Keats in his "To Melancholy", where the souls of poets hang as "cloudy trophies" in the shrine of Melancholy.

My experience has been more in keeping with Blake's: "He who kisses a joy as it flies / Lives in eternity's sunrise."

Keats praised Shakespeare's "negative capability". If I understand the passage correctly, he's referring to the lack of unambiguous messages in Shakespeare's works. Instead of preaching or moralizing, Shakespeare's works mirror life, and let the reader take away his or her own conclusions.

In "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" Keats is letting the reader decide whether the knight's experience was worth it. Keats (the master of negative capability) records no reply to the dying knight.

For Discussion

· What do people mean by "romanticism"? Some common features of works from the movement are:

simple language;
medieval subject matter;
supernatural subject matter;
emphasis on beauty, emotion, and sensuality;
emphasis on unreason.

· In the middle ages, ballads were popular songs that told stories. Keats has imitated the ballad form, and you can find more ballads in the library.

· Why did Keats choose this meter for his poem? The short-footed final lines of each stanza come as a bit of a surprise, and because of the spondees, they take as long to recite as the other lines. Their sudden slowness reminds me of the knight's loss.

· Unless you choose to use your own "negative capability", try to figure out the story. Is the woman a wicked temptress, trying to destroy men for caprice or sheer cruelty? Or are her tactics her way of defending her life and/or the people of her supernatural nation? Or is she, too, unable to fully join with mortal men, and as sad and frustrated as the men whose lives she has touched? Does the knight stay by the lake because he sees no further purpose in living, or because his experience has redefined him as a person, or because he expects the woman to return? What happened to his horse?

· Conservatives have suggested that the enchantress in the poem is a nature-cult that leads to demonic possession. Be this as it may, what is the fascination of the supposed supernatural and magical? Do you know anybody who has had a good and/or a bad experience with something like this?

To include this page in a bibliography, you may use this format: Friedlander ER (1999) Enjoying "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" by John Keats Retrieved Dec. 25, 2003 from http://www.pathguy.com/lbdsm.htm

For Modern Library Association sticklers, the name of the site itself is "The Pathlogy Guy" and the Sponsoring Institution or Organization is Ed Friedlander MD.

Links

Keats

Keats Biography
Keats -- Toronto
Yahoo on John Keats
Keats
Keats
Keats
Keats
Negative Capability
www.john-keats.com
Thomas of Erceldoune (Thomas the Rhymer) was another mortal who was taken by the fairies to their realm where they live in prosperity, peace, and delight -- as Satan's cattle.
U. Florida drawings of sedges, etc.

The Pre-Raphaelites liked to illustrate this poem.

Frank Dicksee

The Vale of Soul Making

There's something else.

As I've mentioned, Keats does not deal with conventional religion in his poems. In several of his private letters, he explicitly stated that he did not believe in Christianity, or in any of the other received faiths of his era.

As he faced death, it's clear that Keats did struggle to find meaning in life. And in the same letter (123) that contains the original of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", Keats gives his answer.

The common cognomen of this world among the misguided and superstitious is "a vale of tears" from which we are to be redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken to Heaven. What a little circumscribed straightened notion!

Call the world, if you please, "the Vale of Soul Making". Then you will find out the use of the world....

There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions -- but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself.

Intelligences are atoms of perception -- they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are God. How then are Souls to be made? How then are these sparks which are God to have identity given them -- so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each one's individual existence. How, but in the medium of a world like this?

This point I sincerely wish to consider, because I think it a grander system of salvation than the Christian religion -- or rather it is a system of Spirit Creation...

I can scarcely express what I but dimly perceive -- and yet I think I perceive it -- that you may judge the more clearly I will put it in the most homely form possible. I will call the world a school instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read. I will call the human heart the hornbook used in that school. And I will call the child able to read, the soul made from that school and its hornbook.

Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul? A place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways....

As various as the lives of men are -- so various become their souls, and thus does God make individual beings, souls, identical souls of the sparks of his own essence.

This appears to me a faint sketch of a system of salvation which does not affront our reason and humanity...

Keats believed that we begin as identical bits of God, and acquire individuality only by life-defining emotional experiences. By doing this, we prepare ourselves for happiness in the afterlife.

You may decide for yourself (or exercise negative capability) about whether you will believe Keats. But it's significant that this most intimate explanation of the personal philosophy behind his work follows a powerful lyric about emotional devastation.

If Keats's philosophy is correct, then any intense experience -- even letting your life rot away after a failed relationship, or enduring the agony of heroin withdrawal, or dying young of tuberculosis -- is precious. (Perhaps Keats, medically trained, was foreseeing his own from TB -- he would have been pale and sweaty and unable to move easily.) Each goes into making you into a unique being.

The idea is as radical as it sounds. And if you stay alert, you'll encounter similar ideas again and again, in some of the most surprising places.

Diotima

He who from these ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.

Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life"

In the universe, there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source, which act upon a person's soul. The soul does not exist ab initio, as orthodox Christianity teaches. It has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved, owing to man's unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia.

Planescape -- adventure gaming based on philosophies of life, where the Sensate faction lives out Keats's ideals.

Dean Koontz, "Intensity"

Mr. Vess is not sure if there is such a thing as the immortal soul, but he is unshakably certain that if souls exist, we are not born with them in the same way that we are born with eyes and ears. He believes that the soul, if real, accretes in the same manner as a coral reef grows from the deposit of countless millions of calcareous skeletons secreted by marine polyp. We build the reef of the soul, however, not from dead polyps but from steadily accreted sensations through the course of a lifetime. In Vess's considered opinion, if one wishes to have a formidable soul -- or any soul at all -- one must open oneself to every possible sensation, plunge into the bottomless ocean of sensory stimuli that is our world, and experience with no consideration of good or bad, right or wrong, with no fear but only fortitude.

I'm an MD, a pathologist in Kansas City, a mainstream Christian. a modernist, a skydiver, an adventure gamer, the world's busiest free internet physician, and a man who still enjoys books and ideas.

Visit my home page E-mail me Brown University, Department of English -- my home base, 1969-1973.

I do not possess Keats's negative capability. You get over a failed relationship by making a conscious decision to do so. I want to grab the horseman in the poem and yell, "Cowboy up!" or something. I suspect most visitors to this page would want to do exactly the same thing.

If I don't share Keats's focus on beauty and sensation over everything else, I do appreciate him for his insights into the human heart.

Teens: Stay away from drugs, work yourself extremely hard in class or at your trade, play sports if and only if you like it, and get out of abusive relationships by any means. If the grown-ups who support you are "difficult", act like you love them even if you're not sure that you do. It'll help you and them. The best thing anybody can say about you is, "That kid likes to work too hard and isn't taking it easy like other young people." Health and friendship.

Like Keats, I had tuberculosis in 1978-82. It was memorable. I'm grateful to modern, reality-based science for my cure.

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Emily Bronte’s “Remembrance”

Cold in the earth – and the deep snow piled above thee
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my Only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time’s all-severing wave?

Cold in the earth, and fifteen wild Decembers
From those brown hills, have melted into spring –
Faithful indeed is the spirit and remembers
After such years of change and suffering!

No later light has lightened up my heaven,
No second morn has ever shone for me
All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given –
All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee.

(The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Brontë. Ed. C.W. Hatfield. New York: Columbia University Press, 1941.)

Emily "The Strange" Brontë (1818-1848)

Emily Jane Brontë was born 30 July 1818, fifth (and oddest1) child of Patrick and Maria Brontë. Maria died when Emily was only three, but, like her sister Charlotte, Emily was later prone to creating motherless characters. She got along best with Anne, the youngest, and they created the world of Gondal together2. At 17, Emily went to the Roe Head School (her first experience with school since a very brief stint at the infamous Clergy Daughters' School) where Charlotte was then teaching. Emily managed to stay only three months before her nerves became too frazzled and she had to go home. She simply couldn't stand not being able to write and think about Gondal as much as she wanted to3.

Emily found a teaching job at Law Hill School in September 1838. The hours were grueling: 6 AM to 11 PM, with half an hour's break, and though Emily managed to do all right in her first term4, her health broke under the stress and she returned home around April 1839. She never again attempted to find any kind of a job.

In 1842, Charlotte dragged Emily to a school in Brussels5. Emily did well (her teachers were especially impressed with her clear, smooth writing style) but made no friends, as was typical for her. She went back home as soon as she possibly could.

Emily had been writing poetry all this time, mostly on Gondal, and in the autumn of 1845, Charlotte found these poems and read them. She then approached her sister and urged her to publish the works. Emily was furious, and Anne interceded, giving her own Gondal poems to Charlotte to help make peace. After editing the poems to remove some of the Gondal-ness, Emily agreed to the publication of Poems under the Acton, Ellis, and Currer Bell pseudonyms6.

In 1846, about the time Charlotte finished The Professor, Emily finished Wuthering Heights. Its style is pure Gondal, and it was almost universally condemned as being far too shocking for anyone to read7. It was this which kept most people thinking of the authors of these books as men, believing that no woman could write such things, even when rumors that they were women started circulating

Branwell died in September 1848, and Charlotte succumbed to her usual psychosomatic illnesses, not realizing that Emily was in fact truly ill. By October, the decline in Emily's health was obvious, though she frustrated the entire family by her refusal to answer any questions or take any advice about her health. Though it was clear she had consumption, she grew angry at even the suggestion of doctors or medicine. On 19 December 1848 she finally collapsed, saying, "If you will send for a doctor, I will see him now." She died early that afternoon, aged thirty.

Charlotte called her sister a "baby god," and always mourned the loss of what Emily might have written had she lived. There is a chance that Charlotte did in fact destroy an uncompleted second novel of Emily's, perhaps feeling that the subject of the novel might do harm to Emily's reputation, of which Charlotte was extremely protective. Charlotte always felt that there were certain subjects which should not be handled in novels, and it's possible that Emily had started working with one of those subjects, causing Charlotte to fear even nastier reviews than the ones for Wuthering Heights. In my opinion, Charlotte should've minded her own business.

She was the only one of the Brontë children to be given a middle name. Apparently even then they realized she was different.
This messed Emily up a little in the long run. She became WAY too attached to this world.
Even when she was nearly 27 years old, she eagerly resorted to playing Gondal characters while on a trip to York with Anne. When she wrote about the trip later, she mentions almost nothing of the trip except for the Gondal fanatasies.
Though she had a hard time relating to her pupils. One student recalled her telling her class that the school's dog was dearer to her than any of them were.
Emily didn't want to leave home at all, but Charlotte had to take someone from the family with her or she wouldn't be allowed to go, and only Emily was available.
Emily was always especially freaked out at the idea of being revealed as an author. She made Charlotte swear never to tell anyone, and at one point, Charlotte out and out lied to her best friend, Ellen Nussey, to keep the secret.
This may startle the modern reader of Wuthering Heights. It just goes to show how far we've come since then.

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The Magnanimity of Wuthering Heights

by Joyce Carol Oates

Originally published in Critical Inquiry, Winter 1983.
Reprinted in The Profane Art : Essays and Reviews
Copyright © 1983 by Joyce Carol Oates

Once upon a time, it seems, an English clergyman born Brunty or Branty, self-baptized the more romantic Brontë, brought home to his four children a box of twelve wooden soldiers. The children lived in isolation in a parsonage high on the Yorkshire moors, which is to say, at the edge of the world; each was possessed of an extraordinarily fecund imagination; the wooden soldiers soon acquired life and identities (among them the Duke of Wellington and Bonaparte). The way by which a masterpiece as unanticipated as Wuthering Heights comes to be written, involving, as it did, the gradual evolution from such early childish games to more complex games of written language (serial stories transcribed by the children in minute italic handwriting meant to resemble print; secret plays, or "bed plays," written at bedtime; the transcribing of the ambitious Gondal and Angria sagas, which were to be viable for nearly fifteen years) is so compelling a tale, so irresistible a legend, one is tempted to see in it a miniature history of the imagination's triumph, in the most socially restricted of environments. No poet or novelist would wish to reduce his mature works to the status of mere games, or even to acknowledge an explicit kinship with the prodigies of the child's dreaming mind; but it is clear that the play of the imagination has much to do with childish origins, and may, in truth, be inseparable from it. As Henry James has observed, in a somewhat peevish aside regarding the "romantic tradition" and the "public ecstasies" surrounding the Brontë sisters, "Literature is an objective, a projected result; it is life that is the unconscious, the agitated, the struggling, floundering cause." Certainly this is true, but its dogma is too blunt, too assured, to inspire absolute confidence. The unconscious energies feed the objective project; life fuels art, in disguised forms, though art is, of course, a highly conscious activity. Literature is far more than a game of words, a game ingeniously constructed of words, but the imagination is expansive enough to accommodate both the child's fantasies and the stratagems of the adult. Out of that long-lost box of wooden soldiers, or its forgotten equivalent, we have all sprung.

It is not simply in contrast to its origins that Wuthering Heights strikes us as so unique, so unanticipated. This great novel, though not inordinately long, and, contrary to general assumption, not inordinately complicated, manages to be a number of things: a romance that brilliantly challenges the basic presumptions of the "romantic"; a "gothic" that evolves—with an absolutely inevitable grace—into its temperamental opposite; a parable of innocence and loss, and childhood's necessary defeat; and a work of consummate skill on its primary level, that is, the level of language. Above all, it is a history: its first statement is the date 1801; and one of its final statements involves New Year's Day (of 1803). It seeks both to dramatize and to explain how the ancient stock of the Earnshaws are restored to their rights (the somber house of Wuthering Heights, built in 1500), and, at the same time, how and why the last of the Earnshaws, Hareton, will be leaving the Heights to live, with his cousin-bride, at Thrushcross Grange. One generation has given way to the next: the primitive energies of childhood have given way to the intelligent compromises of adulthood. The history of the Earnshaws and the Lintons begins to seem a history, writ small, albeit with exquisite detail, of civilization itself.

As a historical novel, published in 1847, "narrated" by Lockwood in 1801-1802, and encompassing an interior story that begins in the late summer of 1771, Wuthering Heights is expansive enough to present two overlapping and starkly contrasting tales: the first, and more famous, a somewhat lurid tragedy of betrayal erected upon a fantasy of childhood (or incestuous) romance"; the second, a story of education, maturing, and accommodation to the exigencies of time. Both stories partake of the slightly fabulous, especially the first (in which, with fairy-tale inevitability, a "gypsy" foundling, named for a dead son, usurps a father's love); both seem to progress less as a consequence of individual and personal desire than of the abstract (and predetermined) evolution of "Nature" into "Society." The great theme of Wuthering Heights, perversely overlooked by many of its admiring critics, as well as by its detractors, is precisely this inevitability: how present-day harmony, in September of 1802, has come about. Far from being a rhapsodical ode to primitive dark energies, populated by savages (whether noble or otherwise), the novel is, in fact, as its elaborate structure makes clear, an assured demonstration of the finite and tragically self-consuming nature of "passion." Romantic and gothic elements cannot survive in the sunlit world of sanity (as Lockwood jealously observes, the second Catherine and her fiancee Hareton look as if, together, "they would brave Satan and all his legions"); the new generation will settle in the more commodious Thrushcross Grange, opening, as it does, in symbolic and literal terms, onto the rest of the world. The curious spell or curse has lifted from the principals of the drama, and will continue to hold sway—so local rumor will have it, doubtless for centuries—only on the moors, where the redoubtable Heathcliff and a woman yet walk, on every rainy night. ("Idle tales," says Mrs. Dean, "and so say I." The citybred Lockwood concurs, and we are invited, however ambiguously, to concur, in the history's closing remark, as Lockwood wonders how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.")

A novel's strategy reveals itself in structure and process, not in isolated passages or speeches, however striking. Any complex work that aspires to a statement about something larger than the experiences it depicts must be understood as a proposition on two levels: that of the immediate, or present time (the shared fiction of the "immediate" as it is evidently experienced by both participant and reader, simultaneously), and that of the historical (in which the fiction of the simultaneous experience of participant and reader is dissolved, and the reader emerges, ideally, at least, with a god's-eye view of the novelist's design). The playful braiding of narrators and magisterial creator that is so pronounced a characteristic of Nabokov's novels is perhaps more willfully ingenious than the "Chinese box" narration of Emily Brontë (which, one should hasten to say, she chose to employ, as a felicitous convention, and did not invent), but scarcely more effective. As much as any Modernist work, Wuthering Heights demands to be reread: the first three chapters (charting the disingenuous Lockwood's introduction to the surly enigmatic inhabitants of Wuthering Heights, both living and dead) yield the author's intention only upon a second reading. And this has not only to do with the time-honored device of withheld information, but with the reader's literal interpretation of Lockwood's experience: for Lockwood is himself a "reader," albeit a most confused one, in these initial chapters.

It is on the level of visceral immediacy, as a fictional "world" is evoked through the employment of language, that a novel lives or dies, or struggles along in a sort of twilit sleep; it is on this higher level, where structure and design are grasped, and all novels make claim to be "histories" (the eager demands of how and why, as well as what, accommodated), that it acquires a more cultural or generalized value. Emily Brontë's sense of the parable residing beneath her melodramatic tale guides us throughout: for we are allowed to know, despite the passionate and painfully convincing nostalgia for the Heights, the moors, and childhood, evinced by Catherine and Heathcliff, that their values, and hence their world (the Heights) are doomed. We acquiesce rather to the lyricism of the text, than to its actual claims: the triumph of the second Catherine and Hareton (the "second" Heathcliff), not only in their union but in their proposed move away from the ancient home of the Earnshaws, is a triumph that quite refutes traditional readings of the novel that dwell upon its dark, brooding, unconscious, and even savage energies. Meaning in literature cannot of course reside solely in the apprehension of design, for one might argue that "meaning" is present in every paragraph, every sentence, every word; but for the novelist such elements as scenes of a dramatic nature, description, historical background, summary of action, etc., are subordinate to the larger, grander, more spacious structure. If Wuthering Heights is the title of this phase of "our" collective history, ending on New Year's Day of 1803, Thrushcross Grange will be the title of the next.

Who will inherit the earth's riches? Who will inherit a stable, rather than a self-consuming, love? What endures, for mankind's sake, is not the violent and narcissistic love of Catherine and Heathcliff (who identify with each other, as fatal twins, rather than individuals), but the easier, more friendly, and altogether more plausible love of the second Catherine and Hareton Earnshaw. How ironic, then, that Brontë's brilliantly imagined dialectic, arguing for the inevitable exorcism of the old demons of childhood, and professing an attitude toward time and change that might even be called optimistic, should have been, and continues to be, misread. That professional critics identify subject matter in process with an ambitious novel's design is one of the curiosities of literary history, and bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the myopic activities of the self-appointed censor, who judges a book by a certain word, on page 58 or 339, and has no need to trouble himself with the rest. Wuthering Heights is no less orderly and ritualistic a work than a representative Greek tragedy, or a novel of Jane Austen's, though its author's concerns are with disorderly and even chaotic elements. One of the wonders of the novel is its astonishing magnanimity, for all the cliches of Emily Brontë's "narrowness." Where else might we find a tough-minded lyricism evoking the mystical value of Nature, contiguous with a vision of the possibilities of erotic experience very like that of the Decadents, or of Sade himself? Where else might we find passionate soliloquies and self-lacerations, of a Dostoyevskian quality, housed in utterly homely, and fastidiously rendered, surroundings? Both Brontë and Melville draw upon Shakespeare for the speeches of certain of their principals (Heathcliff being, in the remarkable concluding pages of the novel, as succinctly eloquent as Edmund, Iago, Macbeth), but it is Brontë's novel that avoids the unnatural strain of allegory, and gives a local habitation to outsized passions.

Wuthering Heights is erected upon not only the accumulated tensions and part-formed characters of adolescent fantasy (adumbrated in the Gondal sagas) but upon the very theme of adolescent, or even childish, or infantile, fantasy. In the famous and unfailingly moving early scene in which Catherine Earnshaw tries to get into Lockwood's chamber (more specifically her old oak-paneled bed, in which, nearly a quarter of a century earlier, she and the child Heathcliff customarily slept together), it is significant that she identifies herself as Catherine Linton though she is in fact a child; and that she informs Lockwood that she had lost her way on the moor, for twenty years. As Catherine Linton, married, and even pregnant, she has never been anything other than a child: this is the pathos of her situation, and not the fact that she wrongly, or even rightly, chose to marry Edgar Linton over Heathcliff. Brontë's emotions are clearly caught up with these child's predilections, as the evidence of her poetry reveals, but the greatness of her genius as a novelist allows her a magnanimity, an imaginative elasticity, that challenges the very premises (which aspire to philosophical detachment) of the Romantic exaltation of the child and childhood's innocence.

The highly passionate relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff, forged in their embittered and savage childhood, has been variously interpreted: it is a doomed "gothic" romance, whose depth of feeling makes the inane Lockwood and his narrative-mate Mrs. Dean appear all the more shallow; it is curiously chaste, for all its emotional outpourings, and as finally "innocent" as any love between sister and brother; then again, it is rude, lurid, unwholesome, intensely erotic, and suggestive of an incestuous bond—indeed. Heathcliff is named for a dead brother of Catherine's, and he, Hindley, and Catherine have slept together as children. (The reasons for Mr. Earnshaw's adoption of the gypsy waif, the goblin, the parentless demon, the dark-skinned "cuckoo," are never made plausible within the story; but it is perhaps instructive to learn that Emily Brontë's great-great-grandfather Hugh Brunty had adopted a blackhaired foundling from Liverpool—who in turn adopted their own grandfather, the younger Hugh. So the vertiginous interrelations and mirror-selves of the novel's central household have, for all their fairy-tale implausibility, an ancestral authenticity.)

So famous are certain speeches in Wuthering Heights proclaiming Catherine's bond with Heathcliff ("Nelly, I am Heathcliff—he's always, always in my mind"),¹ and Heathcliff's with Catherine (Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!")² that they scarcely require reference, at any length: the peculiarity in the lovers' feeling for each other being their intense and unshakable identification, which is an identification with the moors, and with Nature itself, that seems to preclude any human, let alone sexual" bond. They do not behave like adulterous lovers, but speak freely of their relationship before Catherine's husband, Edgar; and they embrace, desperately and fatally, in the presence of the ubiquitous and somewhat voyeuristic Mrs. Dean. (Mrs. Dean is even present, in a sense, when, many years later, Heathcliff bribes the sexton to unearth Catherine's coffin, so that he can embrace her mummified corpse, and dream of dissolving with her, and being more happy still.) So intense an identification between lover and beloved has nothing to do with the dramatic relationship of opposites, who yearn to come together in order to be complete: it is the at-one-ness of the mystic with his God, the peaceful solitude of the unborn babe in the womb. That Heathcliff's prolonged love for the dead Catherine shades by degrees into actual madness is signaled by his breakdown at the novel's conclusion, when the "monomania" for his idol becomes a monomania for death. She, the beloved, implored to return to haunt him, has returned in a terrifying and malevolent way, and will not give him peace. ". . . For what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped in the flags! In every cloud, in every tree-filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day—I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men and women—my own features—mock me with a resemblance."³ So Heathcliff tries to explain the frightening "change" that is upon him, when he sees that he and Catherine have been duplicated, in a sense, and supplanted, by the second Catherine and young Hareton. The old energies of the child's untrammeled life have passed over into the ghoulish energies of death, to which Heathcliff succumbs by degrees. "I have to remind myself to breathe—almost to remind my heart to beat!" Heathcliff, that most physical of beings, declares. "And it is like bending back a stiff spring; it is by compulsion that I do the slightest act not prompted by one thought, and by compulsion, that I notice anything alive, or dead, which is not associated with one universal idea.... I am swallowed up in the anticipation of its fulfillment."⁴

So far as the romantic plot is concerned, it is Catherine's decision to enter into a misguided engagement with Edgar Linton that precipitates the tragedy: more specifically, a melodramatic accident by which Heathcliff overhears part of Catherine's declaration to Mrs. Dean, but creeps away in shame before he can hear her avowal of abiding love for him. In truth, however, the "tragedy" has very little to do with Catherine's conscious will, but seems to have sprung from a phenomenon so impersonal as the passage of time itself. How exquisite, because irremediable, the anguish of "growing up"! Brontë's first-generation lovers would share a kingdom on the moors as timeless, and as phantasmal, as any imagined by Poe. In place of Poe's androgynous male lovers we have the immature Heathcliff (only twenty years old when Catherine dies); in place of the vampire Ligeia, or the amenorrheic Lady Madeleine, is the tomboyish Catherine, whose life has become a terrifying "blank" since the onset of puberty. No more poignant words have been written on the baffled anguish of the child-self, propelled into an unwanted maturity, and accursed by a centripetal force as pitiless as the north wind that blows upon the Heights. Catherine, though pregnant, and soon to give birth, has absolutely no consciousness of the life in her womb, which belongs to the unimagined future and will become, in fact, the "second" Catherine: she is all self, only self, so arrested in childhood that she cannot recognize her own altered face in the mirror. Brontë's genius consists in giving an unforgettable voice to this seductive and deathly centripetal force we all carry within us:

I thought . . . that I was enclosed in the oak-panelled bed at home; and my heart ached with some great grief which, just waking, I could not recollect. I pondered, and worried myself to discover what it could be, and, most strangely, the whole past seven years of my life grew a blank! I did not recall that they had been at all. I was a child; my father was just buried, and my misery arose from the separation that Hindley had ordered between me and Heathcliff. I was laid alone, for the first time, and, rousing from a dismal doze after a night of weeping, I lifted my hand to push the panels aside.... I cannot say why I felt so wildly wretched ... I wish I were a girl again, half savage, and hardy, and free; and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed? Why does my blood rush into a hell of tumult at a few words? I'm sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills.⁵

Why the presumably robust Catherine Earnshaw's life should end, in a sense, at the age of twelve; why, as a married woman of nineteen, she should know herself irrevocably "changed"—the novel does not presume to explain. This is the substance of tragedy, the hell of tumult that is character and fate combined. Her passion for Heathcliff notwithstanding, Catherine's identification is with the frozen and peopleless void of an irrecoverable past, and not with anything human. The feathers she pulls out of her pillow are of course the feathers of dead, wild birds, moorcocks and lapwings: they compel her to think not of the exuberance of childhood, but of death, and even premature death, which is associated with her companion Heathcliff. (Since Heathcliff had set a trap over the lapwing's nest, the mother dared not return, and "we saw its nest in the winter, full of little skeletons.")

This bleak, somber, deathly wisdom is as memorably expressed by Sylvia Plath in her poem "Wuthering Heights," with its characteristic images of a dissolving landscape opening upon the void. Plath, like the fictitious Catherine, suffered a stubborn and irrevocable loss in childhood, and her recognition of the precise nature of this loss is expressed in a depersonalized vocabulary. How seductive, how chill, how terrifying Brontë's beloved moor!

There is no life higher than the grasstops
Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind
Pours by like destiny, bending
Everything in one direction.
I can feel it trying
To funnel my heat away.
If I pay the roots of the heather
Too close attention, they will invite me
To whiten my bones among them.⁶

It is to the roots of the heather that Catherine has paid her fiercest attention.

The novel's second movement, less dramatically focused, but no less rich in observed and often witty detail, transcribes the gradual metamorphosis of the "gothic romance" into its approximate opposite. The abandoned and brutish child Hareton, once discovered in the act of hanging puppies from a chair-back, matures into a goodhearted youth who aids the second Catherine in planting flowers in a forbidden "garden"—and becomes her protector at the Heights. Where all marriages were blighted, and two most perversely (the marriages between Heathcliff and Isabella, and the second Catherine and Heathcliff's son Linton), a marriage of emblematic significance will be celebrated. Everyone will leave the Heights, save the comically embittered old Joseph, the very spirit of sour, gnarled, uncharitable Christianity, who presumably cannot die.

How this miraculous transformation comes about, why it must be grasped as inevitable, has to do with the novelist's grasp of a cyclical timelessness beneath the melodramatic action. The rhythm of the narrative is systaltic, by which I mean not only the strophe and antistrophe of the sudden cuts back to Lockwood in Mrs. Dean's presence, and alone (musing in his diary) but also the subtle counterpoint between the poetic and theatrical speeches of the principal characters, and the life of the Heights with its harvests and apple-pickings and hearths that must be swept clean, its tenant farmers, its vividly observed and felt reality. The canny physicality of Wuthering Heights distinguishes it at once from the "gothic," and from Shakespeare's tragedies as well, where we are presented with an exorcism of evil and an implied (but often ritualistic) survival of good, but never really convinced that this survival is a genuine and not merely a thematic possibility.

Heathcliff, who is said never to read books, comments scornfully on the fact that his young bride Isabella had pictured in him a hero of romance. So wildly deluded was this sheltered daughter of Thrushcross Grange, she expected chivalrous devotion to her, and "unlimited indulgences." Heathcliff's mockery makes us aware of our own bookish expectations of him, for he is defiantly not a hero, and we are warned to avoid Isabella's error in "forming a fabulous notion of my character." Brontë's wit in this passage is supreme, for she allows her "hero" to define himself in opposition to a gothic-romantic stereotype she suspects her readers (well into the twentieth century) cherish; and she allows him, by way of ridiculing poor masochistic Isabella, to ridicule such readers as well.

Are you sure you hate me? If I let you alone for half a day, won't you come sighing and wheedling to me again? . . . The first thing she saw me do, on coming out of the Grange, was to hang up her little dog; and when she pleaded for it the first words I uttered were a wish that I had the hanging of every being belonging to her, except one: possibly she took that exception for herself. But no brutality disgusted her: I suppose she has an innate admiration of it, if only her precious person were secure from injury! Now, was it not the depth of absurdity—of genuine idiocy—for that pitiful, slavish, mean-minded brach to dream that I could love her? . . . I never, in all my life, met with such an abject thing as she is. She even disgraces the name of Linton; and I've sometimes relented, from pure lack of invention, in my experiments on what she could endure, and still creep shamefully cringing back!⁷

This, in Isabella's presence; and naturally Isabella is pregnant. But then Heathcliff observes, in an aside, that he, too, is caught up in this relentless "moral teething," and seems incapable of feeling pity for his victims or for himself. "The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails!" he says. " . . . And I grind with greater energy, in proportion to the increase of pain."⁸ He observes elsewhere that the mere sight of cowering, weak, fearful persons awakens the desire in him to hurt; and an evening's "slow vivisection" of his own son and his child-bride Catherine would amuse him. Even the elder Catherine, who recognizes her kinship with him, calls him a cruel, wolfish man; and she, of all the persons who know him, understands that he is beyond redemption—precisely because he is not a character in a romantic novel, or, indeed, answerable to any "fabulous notions" at all. (If he weakens at the novel's end, it is only physically. His forthright judgment on his actions is: " . . . As to repenting of my injustices, I've done no injustice, and I repent of nothing—I'm too happy, and yet I'm not happy enough.")

Heathcliff's enduring appeal is approximately that of Edmund, Iago, Richard III, the intermittent Macbeth: the villain who impresses by way of his energy, his cleverness, his peculiar sort of courage; and by his asides, inviting, as they do, the audience's or reader's collaboration in wickedness. Brontë is perfectly accurate in having her villain tell us, by way of Mrs. Dean and Lockwood, that brutality does not always disgust; and that there are those persons— often of weak, cringing, undeveloped character—who "innately admire" it, provided they themselves are not injured. (Though, in Isabella's case, it would seem that she has enjoyed, and even provoked, her husband's "experimental" sadism.) Heathcliff presides over a veritable cornucopia of darksome episodes: he beats and kicks the fallen Hindley, he throws a knife at Isabella, he savagely slaps young Catherine, he doesn't trouble to summon a doctor for his dying son, as he no longer has any use for him. Unfailingly cruel, yet sly enough to appear exasperated with his victims' testing of his cruelty, Heathcliff arouses the reader to this peculiar collaborative bond by the sheer force of his language, and his wit: for is he not, with his beloved gone, the lifeforce gone wild? He has no opposition worthy of him; he has no natural mate remaining; he is characterless and depersonalized will—a masklike grimace that can never relax into a smile. (Significantly, Heathcliff is grinning as a corpse—"grinning at death" as old Joseph notes.) Very few readers of Wuthering Heights have cared to observe that there is no necessary or even probable connection between the devoted lover of Catherine, and the devoted hater of all the remaining world (including—and this most improbably—Catherine's own daughter Catherine, who resembles her): for certain stereotypes persist so stubbornly they may very well be archetypes, evoking, as they do, an involuntary identification with energy, evil, will, action. The mass murderer who is really tenderhearted, the rapist whose victims provoke him, the Fuhrer who is a vegetarian and in any case loves dogs.... Our anxieties, which may well spring from childhood experiences, have much to do with denying the actual physicality of the outrages, whether those of Heathcliff or any villain, literary or historic, and supplanting for them, however magically, however pitiably, "spiritual" values. If Heathcliff grinds his victims beneath his feet like worms, is it not natural to imagine that they are worms, and deserve their suffering, is it not natural to imagine that they are not us? We feel only contempt for the potential sadist Linton, who sucks on sugar candy, and whose relationship with his child-wife parodies a normal love relationship (he asks her not to kiss him, because it makes him breathless). Consequently our temptation is to align ourselves with Heathcliff, as Brontë shrewdly understands. Heathcliff pricks the reader's Linton-like imagination in such passages:

I was embarrassed how to punish him, when I discovered his part in the business—he's such a cobweb, a pinch would annihilate him, but you'll see by his look that he has received his due! I brought him down one evening . . . and just set him in a chair, and never touched him afterwards. I sent Hareton out, and we had the room to ourselves. In two hours, I called Joseph to carry him up again; and, since then, my presence is as potent on his nerves as a ghost; and I fancy he sees me often, though I am not near. Hareton says he wakes and shrieks in the night by the hour together....⁹

Yet the novel is saturated with gothic episodes and images, as many critics have noted, and the tone of motiveless cruelty that prevails, in the opening chapters, clearly has nothing to do with the mature Heathcliff's "plan for revenge." The presumably goodhearted and maternal Mrs. Dean tells Heathcliff that since he is taller than Edgar Linton, and twice as broad across the shoulders, he could "knock him down in a twinkling"—whereupon the boy's face brightens for a moment. The presumably genteel Lintons of Thrushcross Grange are not upset that their bulldog Skulker has caught a little girl by the ankle, and that she is bleeding badly; they evince alarmed surprise only when they learn that the child is Miss Earnshaw, of Wuthering Heights. (As for the child Heathcliff: ". . . The villain scowls so plainly in his face: would it not be a kindness to the country to hang him at once, before he shows his nature in acts, as well as features?")¹⁰ One of the most puzzling revelations in the early section is that, after Mr. Earnshaw has gone to the trouble of bringing the foundling home, his own wife's wish is to "fling it out of doors"; and Mrs. Dean places "it" on the landing with the hope that "it might be gone on the morrow"—though where the luckless creature might go in this wild landscape, one would be hard pressed to say. Clearly we are in a gothic world contiguous with Lear's, where daughters turn their fathers out into the storm, and blinded men are invited to sniff their way to safety.

This combative atmosphere is the natural and unspoiled Eden for which the dying Catherine yearns, however inhuman it is. For, like Heathcliff, she is an "exile" and "outcast" elsewhere: only the primitive and amoral child's world can accommodate her stunted character, until she is reborn and transmogrified in a Catherine part Earnshaw and part-Linton.

As for Heathcliff, with his diabolical brow and basilisk eyes, his cannibal teeth, his desperate passion for revenge, is he not a "romantic" incarnation of Iago or Vendice (of The Revenger's Tragedy), another Edmund fired to destroy an Edgar, a revenge-motive imposed upon a fairy tale of love and betrayal? He does not require Hindley to flog and beat him, in order to turn stoically wicked, since he has possessed an implacable will from the very first, having demonstrated no affection or gratitude for the elder Mr. Earnshaw, who had not only saved his life in Liverpool but (for reasons not at all clear in realistic terms) had loved him above his own children. Near the end of the novel Mrs. Dean wonders aloud if her master might be a ghoul or a vampire, since he has begun to prowl the moor at night, and she has read of "such hideous, incarnate demons." Her characteristic common sense wavers; she sinks into sleep, taxing herself with the rhetorical question: "But where did he come from, the little dark thing, harboured by a good man to his bane?"—a question that is presumably ours as well. From where does "evil" spring, after all, if not from "good"? And is it sired by "good"? And "harboured" by it? This particular demon is Heathcliff only: Heathcliff Heathcliff, possessing no other name: sired, it would seem, by himself, and never legally adopted by Mr. Earnshaw. (His headstone reads only "Heathcliff" and the date of his death: no one can think of an appropriate inscription for his monument.)

Yet if Heathcliff must enact the depersonalized role of a damned spirit, the "romantic" motif of the novel necessitates his having been a victim himself—not of Hindley or of the "ruling classes," but of his soul-mate Catherine. He is unkillable but may die from within, willing his own extinction, as his "soul's bliss kills his body, but does not satisfy itself." Just as the narcissistic self-laceration of the childlovers cannot yield to so social and communal a ritual as marriage, so, too, does the "romantic-gothic" mode consume itself, and retreat into history: for the fiction of Wuthering Heights must be that we have had Lockwood's diary put into our hands, many years after his transcription of events belonging to another century. We read his "reading" of Mrs. Dean's tale, parts of which seem remote and even legendary. Ghosts are by popular tradition trapped on an earthly plane, cursed by the need, which any compulsive-obsessive neurotic might understand, to cross and recross the same unyielding terrain, never advancing, never progressing, never attaining the freedom of adulthood. Even Edgar, the wronged husband, the master of Thrushcross Grange, soliloquizes:

I've prayed often . . . for the approach of what is coming: and now I begin to shrink, and fear it. I thought the memory of the hour I came down that glen a bridegroom would be less sweet than the anticipation that I was soon, in a few months, or, possibly, weeks, to be carried up, and laid in its lonely hollow! Ellen, I've been very happy with my little Cathy.... But I've been as happy musing by myself among those stones, under that old church, lying, through the long June evenings, on the green mound of her mother's grave, and wishing—yearning for the time when I might lie beneath it.¹¹

Considering his late wife's vehement rejection of him, this is an extraordinary statement, and Edgar goes on to say that, to prevent Heathcliff's victimization of his daughter, he would "rather resign her to God, and lay her in the earth before me." Nothing is learned in the older generation; the ease of death is preferred to the combat of life. The wonder is that so strong-willed a personality as young Catherine can have sprung from such debilitated soil.

So with the perpetual childhood of myths, fairy tales, legends, and gothic romances, which, occupying a timeless "present," relate to no time at all. Being outsized and exemplary of passions, their characters cannot be human: they are frozen in a single attitude, they are an attitude, and can never develop. Only young Catherine undergoes a change of personality, and, in willfully altering her own fate, transforms the Heights itself. She alone resists Heathcliff; she nurses her invalid husband in his final sickness, and nearly succumbs to death herself. When Heathcliff somewhat uncharacteristically asks her how she feels, after Linton has died, she says: "He's safe, and I'm free.... I should feel well—but ... you have left me so long to struggle against death alone, that I feel and see only death! I feel like death!"¹²—a speech that allows us to see how very far Catherine has come, within a remarkably brief span of time.

In another sort of novel Heathcliff would assuredly have been drawn to his widowed daughter-in-law, if only for sexual, or exploitative purposes: but Wuthering Heights is fiercely chaste, and none of its characters gives any impression of being violated by a sexual idea. (The fact that Catherine is pregnant, and that her pregnancy is advanced, during the final tempestuous love scene between her and Heathcliff, is never commented upon by anyone: not even by the unequivocal Mrs. Dean, whose domain is the physical world and whose eye is presumably undimmed by romance. One must be forgiven for wondering if the pregnancy—the incontestably huge belly of Catherine Linton—is not acknowledged because it is so blatant a fact of physical life, so absolute a fact of her wifehood, which excludes Heathcliff; or because, given the Victorian strictures governing author as well as characters, it cannot be acknowledged. Perhaps there is simply no vocabulary to enclose it.)

Young Catherine, however, has not inherited her mother's predilection for the grave. She soon exhibits an altogether welcome instinct for self-knowledge and compromise—for the subtle stratagems of adult life—that have been, all along, absent in her elders. Where Heathcliff by his nature remains fixed and two-dimensional, a character in a bygone drama, until his final "change" draws him so unresistingly to death, Catherine's nature is bound up with, and enforced by, the cyclical motion of the seasons: her triumph over him is therefore inevitable. Once or twice she lapses to the self-absorbed manner of the elder Catherine, in seeking (futilely) to provoke two men into fighting over her; but she is too clever to persist. That she learns to accommodate Hareton's filial affection for his monstrous "father" indicates the scope and range of her new maturity—an attribute, it must be said, that genuinely surprises the reader. For suddenly it becomes possible at Wuthering Heights, as if for the first time in human history, that one generation will not be doomed to repeat the tragic errors of its parents. Suddenly, childhood is past; it retreats to a darkly romantic and altogether poignant legend, a "fiction" of surpassing beauty but belonging to a remote time.

As the stylized gothic romance yields to something approaching "realism," the artfully fractured chronology begins to sort itself out, as if we are waking rapidly from a dream, and the present time of September 1802 is the authentic present, for both the diarist Lockwood and the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights. Mysteries are gradually dispelled; we have gained a more certain footing; as Lockwood makes his way to the Heights, he notes that "all that remained of day was a beamless, amber light along the west; but I could see every pebble on the path, and every blade of grass by that splendid moon." The shift from the gothic sensibility has been prepared from the very first, by Brontë's systematically detailed settings, which are rendered in careful prose by the narrators Lockwood and Mrs. Dean—the only characters we might reasonably expect to see the Heights, the Grange, and the moors. The romantic lovers consume themselves in feeling; they feel deeply enough but their feeling relates only to themselves, and excludes the rest of the world. But the narrators, and, through them, the reader, are privileged to see. (It is significant that the ghost-lovers of the older generation walk the moors on rainy nights, and that the lovers of the new generation walk by moonlight.)

For all that she has been demeaned as ordinary, unimaginative, and incapable of comprehending a "grand passion" of the operatic scale of Catherine's and Heathcliff's, the novel's central narrator, Ellen Dean, in her solitary fashion, remains unshakably faithful to the actual world in which romance burns itself out: the workaday world of "splendidly reflected" light and heat, and smooth white paving stone, and high-backed chairs, and immense pewter vessels and tankards, and kitchens cheerful with great fires. Never has the physical world been rendered with more precision, and more obvious sympathy, whether it is the primitive outer world of the moors, or the interiors of the houses; that curious and endlessly fascinating oak paneled bed, with "squares cut out near the top, resembling coach windows"; Miss Catherine Earnshaw's silken costume, when she returns from five weeks at the Grange; the pipes old Joseph smokes, with evident pleasure. "I smelt the rich scent of the heating spices," Mrs. Dean reports, "and admired the shining kitchen utensils, the polished clock, decked in holly, the silver mugs ranged on a tray ready to be filled with mule ale for supper; and, above all, the speckless purity of my particular care—the scoured and well-swept floor. I gave due inward applause to every object...."¹³

It is this fidelity to the observed physical world, and Brontë's own inward applause, that makes the metamorphosis of the dark tale into its opposite so plausible, as well as so ceremonially appropriate. Though the grave is misjudged by certain persons as a place of fulfillment, the world is not after all phantasmal: it is by daylight that love survives. Long misread as a poetic and metaphysical work given a sort of sickly, fevered radiance by way of the "narrowness" of Emily Brontë's imagination, Wuthering Heights can be more accurately be seen as a work of mature and astonishing magnitude. The poetic and the "prosaic" are in exquisite harmony; the metaphysical is balanced by the physical. An anomaly, a sport, a freak in its own time, it can be seen by us, in ours, as brilliantly of that time—and contemporaneous with our own.

Notes

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Clifton Snider
English Department
California State University, Long Beach

The "Imp of Satan": The Vampire Archetype in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre

The academic industry that feeds on the Brontë sisters is enormous. Especially tasty are Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847), which until the rise of feminist criticism in the last fifteen to twenty years has in this century taken second place to Emily's one powerful novel. (In the nineteenth century, the situation was generally reversed.) ¹My purpose here is not to survey the myriad fruits the Brontë industry has produced, although since my approach is Jungian, a word about the psychological treatment of these two Brontë novels seems appropriate.² Recently, Linda H. Peterson has summarized the psychoanalytic treatments of Wuthering Heights:

Modern psychoanalytic critics have applied multiple theories to Brontë's novel--finding everything from Freudian "phallic" symbols, to Jungian archetypes, to traits of vampirism and even lycanthropy (werewolfism). (302)

Peterson naturally finds the essay she includes in her edition of the novel and critical approaches to it, Philip Wion's "The Absent Mother in Wuthering Heights," a "less extreme (and more convincing) approach" (302). Yet Wion's article betrays a fault too often found in so-called psychoanalytical approaches; that is, he uses Emily Brontë's life to analyze her novel, thus risking what Jung himself warned against: reducing the "artist’s creativity" to "a mere symptom" ("Psychology and Literature" 86). Another Freudian critic, Thomas Moser, maintains that

Emily Brontë dramatized what Freud subsequently called the id. She discovered and symbolized in Heathcliff and, to a lesser extent, in Cathy that part of us we know so little about, the secret wellspring of vitality, the child that lurks within everyone, even within so ordinary a person as Nelly Dean or one so weak as Lockwood. (4)

Heathcliff, Moser believes, is "the embodiment of sexual energy" (4). Interestingly, Wion sees "the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff as a displaced version of the symbiotic relationship between mother and child" (318). There is some truth to the claims of both critics, though Wion weakens his claim by linking his interpretation to the author’s personal life.

Unfortunately, the late eminent Jungian analyst, Barbara Hannah, who should have known better, does the same kind of analysis of Emily Brontë (and her family) as does Wion. In Striving for Wholeness, Hannah writes:

I venture the hypothesis that the entrance of Heathcliff into the Earnshaw family depicts or is an analogy of the entrance of a symbol of the process of individuation into the whole Brontë family. The individual characteristics of Heathcliff and the further developments of the story show the individual way that Emily dealt with it, or rather the way it dealt with her, what her soul suffered itself and which she here records in a unique document. (224-25)

Some investigation of an author's life is useful and even necessary, but as Jung warned, if the novel can be explained solely in terms of the author’s biography, it is "psychological," not "visionary." To be visionary a work must stem from the collective unconscious and thus have universal (mythic) application--its meaning can never be fully explained for, like archetypal symbols, it reflects as in a mirror the infinite facets of the collective psyche as it is exposed to the work. Each generation will find new (or perhaps similar) responses. Joan Carson, another Jungian critic, is more on the mark when she analyzes the "regression to childhood and the primal situation" Catherine and Heathcliff symbolize, as well as "the archetypal experience of the night sea journey" (133). Stevie Davies compares Wuthering Heights to the Psyche and Cupid myth and maintains the elder Catherine's story is an original myth of loss, exile, rebirth and return It has the self-contained and opaque quality of all myth. It imagines the human soul as being female, seeking a lost male counterpart. Sexual union is not the subject of the story; rather it is the metaphor for a search, which is metaphysical and "human" in the largest sense. (97)

Virginia Woolf, as perceptive a critic as she was a genius in writing fiction, understood the mythic power of Wuthering Heights, the "struggle," as she calls it, "to say something through the mouths of her [Emily Brontë's] characters which is not merely 'I love' or 'I hate,' but 'we, the whole human race' and 'you, the eternal powers...' the sentence remains unfinished" (164), which implies that a visionary work can never be fully explained. Feminist critics such as Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar also recognize the "myth-making" aspect of Emily's masterpiece "created by a woman in the misogynistic context of Western literary culture" (252).

Although Jane Eyre is only recently, with studies such as that by Gilbert and Gubar in The Madwoman in the Attic, receiving the same kind of serious attention as has been received by Wuthering Heights, it too is a mythic work, one which, unlike Wuthering Heights, depicts a woman's individuation process. Here I differ with Hannah, who writes, Wuthering Heights undoubtedly represents the crown of what Emily found in the unconscious, for in it we can see an image of the process of individuation, carried as far, I think, as possible in its projected form. (210, italics Hannah's). Gilbert and Gubar see Charlotte Brontë as "Borrowing the mythic quest-plot--but not the devout substance--of Bunyan's male Pilgrim's Progress " (336).

As may be expected because of the greater esteem held for Wuthering Heights, there are virtually no Jungian studies of Jane Eyre, albeit Hannah includes a chapter on Charlotte Brontë in Striving Towards Wholeness. Helene Moglen, in her perceptive study, Charlotte Brontë: The Self Conceived, does use Jung indirectly by quoting Northrop Frye on the romance versus the novel: "The romancer does not attempt to create 'real people' so much as stylized figures which expand into psychological archetypes. It is in the romance that we find Jung's Libido, Anima, and Shadow reflected in a hero, heroine and villain respectively" (Moglen 107). To Moglen, Jane Eyre is a combination of novel and romance, a "benign alternative to the Byronic myth" (108); indeed, the novel is, as the title of her chapter on Jane Eyre declares, "The Creation of a Feminist Myth" (105).

Jane Eyre was by far the most well received and popular of the three Brontë novels published in 1847. Although written later than Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey (which appeared together), Jane Eyre was published on 16 October 1847, some two months before the other novels came out (Fraser 277 and 286). An unsigned review of Wuthering Heights in the Examiner (January 1848) declares: "This is a strange book. It is not without evidences of considerable power. Heathcliff is an incarnation of evil qualities: implacable hate, ingratitude, cruelty, falsehood, selfishness, and revenge" (reprinted in Allott 220). The anonymous reviewer for Britannia (15 January 1848) believes Wuthering Heights is "strangely original" but feels the novel "would have been a far better romance if Heathcliff alone had been a being of stormy passions, instead of all the other characters being nearly as violent and destructive as himself" (reprinted in Allott 223 and 224). Another unsigned review in Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper (15 January 1848) remarks:

Wuthering Heights is a strange sort of book, --baffling all regular criticism; yet, it is impossible to begin and not finish it; and quite impossible to lay it aside afterwards and say nothing about it. The reader is shocked, disgusted, almost sickened by details of cruelty, inhumanity, and the most diabolical hate and vengeance, and anon come passages of powerful testimony to the supreme power of love--even over demons in the human form. The women in the book are of a strange fiendish-angelic nature, tantalizing, and terrible, and the men are indescribable out of the book itself. (reprinted in Allott 228)

The initial critics seem to agree on the strangeness and power of Wuthering Heights, not to mention the outrageous evil depicted in it, especially in the character of Heathcliff. Such strong reaction suggests the book struck an archetypal chord, as it continues to do so today.

Critics also recognized power in Charlotte's novel. The anonymous critic for the Atlas (23 October 1847) writes of Jane Eyre: "It is one of the most powerful domestic romances which have been published for many years" (reprinted in Allott 67). As with Wuthering Heights, some readers could hardly put it down once they began reading it. W. M. Thackeray, the novelist Charlotte so much admired, wrote to W. S. Williams, her publisher's reader, on 23 October 1847: "I wish you had not sent me Jane Eyre. It interested me so much that I have lost (or won if you like) a whole day in reading it at the busiest period"(reprinted in Allott 70). The anonymous reviewer for the Critic (30 October 1847) writes: Jane Eyre "is a story of surpassing interest, riveting the attention from the very first chapter" (reprinted in Allott 73).

Not all the reviews were positive. The anonymous reviewer for the Christian Remembrancer (April 1848), an organ of the High Church Party, speculates that the author is a woman (the book was published under the pseudonym Currer Bell, just as Emily and Anne used the names Ellis and Acton Bell), yet ironically a book more unfeminine, both in its excellences and defects, it would be hard to find in the annals of female authorship. Throughout there is masculine power, breadth and shrewdness, combined with masculine hardness, coarseness, and freedom of expression. Slang is not rare. The humour is frequently produced by a use of Scripture, at which one is rather sorry to have smiled. The love-scenes glow with a fire as fierce as that of Sappho, and somewhat more fuliginous. There is an intimate acquaintance with the worst parts of human nature, a practiced sagacity in discovering the latent ulcer, and a ruthless rigor in exposing it, which must commend our admiration, but are most startling in one of the softer sex. (reprinted in Allott 89)

The reviewer, whose sexist comments suggest why the Brontës chose to publish under ambiguous pseudonyms, further comments: "The plot is most extravagantly improbable, verging all along upon the supernatural, and at last running fairly into it. All the power is shown and all the interest lies in the characters"(90). The strong sexual undercurrents in both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and the supernatural elements are both in part aspects of the vampire archetype Charlotte and Emily Brontë use. As visionary literature in the sense Jung uses the term, both novels thus compensate for contemporary collective psychic imbalance--specifically for Victorian prudery, prejudice, and hyper rationalism, a legacy from the eighteenth century, which the Brontës' hero, Lord Byron (see fig. 2), as well as the other Romantics, also compensated for. James B. Twitchell has already done a more than adequate job of discussing the vampiric elements in these novels in his book, The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature. However, no one as far as I know has examined the archetypal implications of the Brontës' use of vampiric elements.⁴ I intend to examine these implications here.

Before investigating the vampire archetype, I want briefly to discuss Charlotte Brontë's oft-repeated comments in her Editor's Preface to the New Edition of Wuthering Heights (1850). Her comments about the creative act apply to Emily as well as to herself and to Anne, for in the Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell (1850) published with the Editor's Preface to Wuthering Heights, she writes of her sisters: "they always wrote from the impulse of nature, the dictates of intuition" (reprinted in Sale 319). In the Editor's Preface Charlotte further declares:

Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is. But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master--something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. It sets to work on statue hewing, and you have a Pluto or a Jove, a Tisiphone or a Psyche, a Mermaid or a Madonna, as Fate or Inspiration direct. Be the work grim or glorious, dread or divine, you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you--the nominal artist--your share in it has been to work passively under dictates you neither delivered nor could question--that would not be uttered at your prayer, nor suppressed nor changed at your caprice. If the result is attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will blame you, who almost as little deserve blame. (Reprinted in Sale 322)

This romantic view of the artistic process corresponds almost exactly to Jung's neo Platonic ideas. For example, in "On The Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry," Jung writes: "Analysis of artists consistently shows not only the strength of the creative impulse arising from the unconscious, but also its capricious and willful character. The unborn work in the psyche of the artist is a force of nature that achieves its end either with tyrannical might or with the subtle cunning of nature herself We would do well, therefore, to think of the creative process as a living thing implanted in the human psyche" (74-75). In "Psychology and Literature," Jung further comments: "The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him" (101). Jung is referring especially to artists who create what he calls visionary art, art that compensates for collective psychic imbalance. "In itself," Jung writes, an archetype is neither good nor evil. It is morally neutral, like the gods of antiquity, and becomes good or evil only by contact with the conscious mind, or else a paradoxical mixture of both. There are many such archetypal images, but they do not appear in the dreams of individuals or in works of art unless they are activated by a deviation from the middle way. Whenever conscious life becomes one-sided or adopts a false attitude, these images "instinctively" rise to the surface in dreams and in the visions of artists and seers to restore the psychic balance, whether of the individual or of the epoch. (104)

This is precisely what happened with the creation of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre--they both compensate for contemporary prudery, hyper rationalism, and, particularly in the case of Jane Eyre, sexism. These novels are visionary art, contemporary myths that apply to our era as much as they applied to the mid-nineteenth century.

By examining the vampire archetype in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre it goes without saying I am not attempting to give the definitive reading of these complex novels. I am not even attempting to give the definitive Jungian reading, as if such a thing were possible. Rather, I want simply to add another layer of meaning, as it were, to the novels, to make a contribution to our understanding of them as visionary literature.
Not much has been written by Jung and Jungians on the vampire. If you consult the General Index to Jung's Collected Works, you will find exactly one reference to the word "vampire." It appears in paragraph 370 of volume seven, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology--a seminal volume to be sure. Jung is discussing the anima and the animus. When a patient fails to consciously accommodate these contrasexual archetypes, Jung says, they give rise to a negative activity and personification, i.e., to the autonomy of animus and anima. Psychic abnormalities then develop, states of possession ranging in degree from ordinary moods and "ideas" to psychoses. All these states are characterized by one and the same fact that an unknown "something" has taken possession of a smaller or greater portion of the psyche and asserts its hateful and harmful existence undeterred by all our insight, reason, and energy, thereby proclaiming the power of the unconscious over the conscious mind, the sovereign power of possession. In this state the possessed part of the psyche generally develops an animus or anima psychology. The woman's incubus consists of a host of masculine demons; the man's succubus is a vampire. (Two Essays 224)

There is also a single reference to a vampire in Jung's oral biography as recorded by Aniela Jaffé, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Here Jung discusses the case of a "young catatonic patient" (128) whose fantasy (revealed after Jung was able to get her to talk) was that she had lived on the moon. The moon, it seemed, was inhabited, but at first she had seen only men. They had at once taken her with them and deposited her in a sublunar dwelling where their children and wives were kept. For on the high mountains of the moon there lived a vampire who kidnapped and killed the women and children, so that the moon people were threatened with extinction. That was the reason for the sublunar existence of the feminine half of the population. (129)

Jung's patient decides to kill the vampire, and to this end she waits "on the platform of a tower . . . erected for this purpose." She waits for a few nights until the vampire appears, "winging his way toward her like a great black bird." Hiding her "sacrificial knife," she waits for him to stand in front of her, as he does, covered by "several pairs of wings. Wonder-struck, she was seized by curiosity to find out what he really looked like. She approached, hand on the knife. Suddenly the wings opened and a man of unearthly beauty stood before her." The power of the archetype is demonstrated by the fact that she is so "spellbound" by the beauty of the vampire she cannot kill him. He flies off with her (129). Jung concludes his discussion of this case, which I will not detail here, by noting the following: "By telling me her story she had in a sense betrayed the demon and attached herself to an earthly human being. Hence she was able to return to life and even to marry" (130).

Interestingly, the vampire here lives not under ground, as is usual for vampires (during the day at least), but "on the high mountains of the moon." Although the unconscious is probably most often symbolized by images of depth and enclosure--the ocean, caves, cellars, anything beneath the feet--here the "demon" is above, just as Bertha Mason Rochester lives on the third floor of Thornfield, her husband's mansion. Perhaps for these women, Jung's patient and Jane Eyre, because they are women and hence more closely tied than most men to the earth, the terror of the vampire, an unconscious symbol realized consciously, comes from above, from the realm, not of the Earth Mother but of the Father, for in Western, patriarchal culture, the masculine is more often associated with the sky and the feminine with the earth⁶(although the moon is usually a feminine symbol in Western myth).

To say that a vampire is a creature who returns to the realm of the living after having died and lives by sucking blood is to define merely one manifestation, for there are "psychic or astral vampires or those peculiar species that are nonhuman" (Bunson 262). The Brontës don't portray the undead so much as they portray psychic vampires; Twitchell's phrase, the "living dead," might be an apt term. Barbara Holt's description of the psychic vampire as a "predatory" individual with "charisma" (14) certainly applies to Heathcliff, Bertha (albeit the charisma applies mainly to her younger persona), and Rochester. The first two of these characters become the "heartless as well as soulless" people Hort describes (13). Rochester becomes such after his failed marriage with Bertha. Unlike the other two, Rochester, as we shall see, is able to change for the better.

Jung obviously was not very interested in elucidating the symbolism of the vampire, though he recognized its existence as a malignant image from the collective unconscious. In the quotation from Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, Jung identifies a negative image of the anima as a vampire, perhaps a kind of lamia. If the vampire can be an image of the anima, it can also symbolize the animus (for the vampire is, or can be, a kind of demon). It also symbolizes the shadow, as Jungian psychologist Anthony Stevens recognizes in a discussion of fear of possession by "the powers of darkness" (212). Furthermore, the vampire is a trickster, able to change into many shapes, among them bats, wolves, spiders, butterflies, fog, or even a bit of straw (Marigny 55 and Twitchell 11). Both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are rife with vicious animals and animal imagery that are images of the trickster. Lockwood is attacked by a female dog, part of a "hive" of "four-footed fiends" (E. Brontë, ed. Sale 6; all references to Wuthering Heights are to this edition) upon his first visit to Wuthering Heights. He mistakes a "heap of dead rabbits" for an "obscure cushion full of something like cats" (8-9). Catherine is injured by, significantly, a male bulldog named Skulker (38). This injury disrupts forever her childish union with Heathcliff. Heathcliff is more than once called a dog. Jane Eyre's first encounter with Rochester is filled with trickster imagery:

The din was on the causeway; a horse was coming; the windings of the lane yet hid it, but it approached. I remembered certain of Bessie's tales, wherein figured a North-of-England spirit, called a "Gytrash," which, in the form of horse, mule, or large dog, haunted solitary ways, and sometimes came upon belated travelers, as this horse was now coming upon me.

Now, along with the "tramp, tramp" of the horse, Jane hears "a rush under the hedge, and close down by the hazel stems glided a great dog, whose black and white color made him a distinct object against the trees. It was exactly one mask of Bessie's Gytrash,--a lion-like creature with long hair and a huge head. . . and pretercanine eyes" (C. Brontë, ed. Dunn 98; all references to Jane Eyre are to this edition). Soon the horse comes with a man on it, and Jane realizes this is no Gytrash, for "it was always alone" (98). Then man and horse slip on some ice and Rochester takes his famous fall, not the last of which he will have to take before he and Jane can truly be one. Jane dreams prophetically "that Thornfield Hall was a dreary ruin, the retreat of bats and owls" (248). Significantly, these are night creatures, one of which, the bat, is especially associated with the vampire. The child, the "scared infant" (249) Jane carries in her dream through the house symbolizes her growing consciousness. The fact it and she fall suggests, like the split chestnut tree, that she and Rochester are not ready psychically to be united. Finally, Jane calls Bertha a "clothed hyena" (258), and Rochester says Bertha made of her room on the third floor of Thornfield a "wild beast's den--a goblin's cell" (272).

Twitchell describes well the operation of the literary (as opposed to the folkloric) vampire, a combination of the contrasexual/shadow/trickster archetypes:

The actual "attack" is almost always the same: it is nighttime, probably midnight, the bewitching hour. The moon should be full, for the vampire is not only revived by moonlight, he is energized by it. Assuming that the vampire is male, the female victim is preparing to sleep, in that dim world between sleeping and waking. She sees her recently deceased lover (often her late husband) standing before her, perhaps outside the window. Now the victim must make some inviting move; she must unhasp the window, open the door, do anything that shows she is acceding, even slightly. . . . the vampire cannot cross a threshold without this invitation; he is bound to wait pathetically like a schoolboy until invited in. Once inside, however, his powers gradually increase. (10)

The vampire must then "entrance her with his hypnotic stare. This trance, if successful, will put the victim under his power, and she will have no memory of their encounters" (10). The encounter, of course, involves the vampire's taking of blood, usually, since Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), from the neck, although in folklore the bite can be almost anywhere on the body (Twitchell 11). Bertha, in Jane Eyre, has no need of an invitation to attack her brother or her husband. Her problem is the threshold guardian, Grace Poole, who can be circumvented when she (Poole) drinks too much. Also, in regard to both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, it is significant that a vampire's victims are "those whom he loved most when alive. The initial victims are friends and family who, of course, recognize the vampire as one who was loved and trusted" (Twitchell 10).

Another archetype the vampire symbolizes, one that figures in both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, is the scapegoat. Paul Barber, in his fine study, Vampires, Burial, and Death, points out that in folklore one could become a vampire after death simply "by being a difficult and troublesome person; people who are different, unpopular, or great sinners are apt to return from the dead" (29). Suicides especially are likely to become vampires, as are sorcerers and alcoholics: "lists of potential revenants [a term that can be applied to vampires] tend to contain people who are distinguished primarily by being different from the people who make the lists" (30). Furthermore, "Although vampires are far more often male than female, the exceptions to the rule are commonly mothers who have died in childbirth" (36). "Vampires," Barber also notes, they tend to be those who have died 'before their time'" (114). These examples clearly apply to Heathcliff and Catherine, who dies in childbirth. Twitchell adds to the list: "Dying unbaptized, being buried in unconsecrated ground, being excommunicated, copulating with a witch or demon, being the seventh child of the same sex, being born on Christmas day, being born with precocious teeth, being unruly during Lent" (9). Twitchell divides the taboo categories into "sins against the church" (here Bertha would certainly qualify, as would Rochester himself and Heathcliff); and "any social peculiarity might be a sign of diabolical propensities. So in dark-eyed cultures the blue-eyed were suspect; in dark-haired societies the blond was exiled [and] persons suffering from epilepsy or anorexia were obvious choices in all societies" (9).

From the above description, it is obvious that Heathcliff and Bertha qualify as potential vampires, if not actual ones. Heathcliff's difference is emphasized from the time Mr. Earnshaw brings him to Wuthering Heights, a boy he found in Liverpool starving and homeless, whom even Earnshaw calls "it": "you must e'en take it as a gift of God, though it's as dark almost as if it came from the devil" (28). Mrs. Earnshaw calls Heathcliff a "gipsy brat" (29), and her son, Hindley, calls him a "dog" and an "imp of Satan" (31). Hindley's son, after only ten months' separation from Nelly Dean and now under the adult Heathcliff's care, calls the latter "Devil daddy" (85), an example of Emily Brontë's grim humor. Isabella refers also to Heathcliff's "sharp cannibal teeth" (136), a description that clearly could apply to a vampire. Indeed, Isabella's obsession with Heathcliff is itself an example of what Jung calls possession by an archetype. Here the trickster element of the vampire triumphs. After she succumbs to him, she realizes, as she tells Nelly, Heathcliff is a "'fiend, a monster, and not a human being!'" (118). Like the woman who lived on the moon, she could not resist the beauty--as she saw it--of the vampiric Heathcliff. Finally, note Nelly's description of Heathcliff as Catherine lies dying: "he gnashed at me, and foamed like a mad dog, and gathered her [Catherine] to him with greedy jealousy. I did not feel as if I were in the company of a creature of my own species [. . .]" (124). By making Heathcliff the hero of her novel Emily Brontë compensates for Victorian prejudice against outsiders, such as gypsies and beggars, as well as prejudice against the supernatural. Jane's sympathy for Bertha does the same.

As for Bertha, her description is even more in line with that of vampires of the scapegoat variety and with the folkloric tradition. An outsider like Heathcliff, she comes from even further away--Spanish Town, Jamaica. Her mother, a Creole, "'was both a mad woman and a drunkard [. . . and] Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points,'" according to Rochester (257). Her hideous laugh may have been inspired by Lord Ruthven's "loud laugh" in John Polidori's The Vampyre (273). Before she knows who Bertha is, Jane describes her to Rochester: "'a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair hanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on: it was white and straight; but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I cannot tell'" (249, italics mine). Bertha's face, Jane tells Rochester, "was a discoloured face--it was a savage face. I wish I could forget the roll of the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments."
"Ghosts are usually pale, Jane." "This, sir, was purple : the lips were swelled and dark ;
the brow furrowed; the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot eyes ." (249, italics mine)

In folklore, Barber notes, the vampire "is never pale, as one would expect of a corpse: his face commonly is described as florid, or of a healthy color, or dark, and this may be attributed to his habit of drinking blood" (41); also, the body tends to be swollen (42). Should the reader have any doubt as to what creature Charlotte Brontë is alluding to, Jane removes that doubt. "'Shall I tell you of what it reminded me?'" she asks Rochester (249). "'You may,'" he replies, to which she answers: "'Of the foul German spectre--the Vampyre'" (250).

The use of the actual word, "Vampyre," indicates Charlotte was aware of the concept of vampires. Emily too uses the word in Wuthering Heights. Near the end of his life, when Heathcliff in effect commits suicide, as had Catherine, by refusing to eat, Nelly asks him: "'Tell me why you are so queer, Mr. Heathcliff?'" (249). She alludes to his "deep black eyes" (249), which, like Bertha's, are "blood-shot" (252). He looks like a "goblin" (249), and Nelly wonders, "Is he a ghoul, or a vampire?" (250). We know that, despite their isolation in the parsonage at Haworth, the Brontë children were well read and had access to the leading magazines of the day. Winifred Gérin, a major biographer of Charlotte, writes: "With Byron's works Charlotte was fully acquainted at 13" (24).⁷ Byron had dealt with the vampire in "The Giaour," and had inspired his physician, John Polidori, to write the first vampire fiction in English prose, "The Vampyre: A Tale" (1819; see fig. 4), after that memorable night in June 1816 in Geneva when Byron challenged himself, Polidori, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to each write a ghost story (Bleiler xxxiii). Matthew Bunson writes: "Polidori took the framework of the tale that Byron had begun in the Villa Diodati and authored 'The Vampyre'" (206). Quite probably Emily and Charlotte read Polidori's story, for the author was widely believed to be Byron, not Polidori (see Bleiler xxxvi-xxxix). The story was particularly popular in France, where it inspired several plays. Since both Emily and Charlotte lived in French-speaking Brussels it is entirely possible they would have been exposed to the story there. In any case, the sisters' novels are evidence enough to show their awareness of the archetype.

Although Emily's poetry doesn't explicitly utilize the archetype, there are anticipations of its use in Wuthering Heights. Like Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti, contemporary poets superior to her, Brontë often writes about death and the afterlife, favorite Victorian preoccupations. In a poem that anticipates the situation of Cathy and Heathcliff (only reverses it, for the male dies first in the poem), the speaker suggests that the dead male might return for love of the other:

And if he came not for her woe
He would not now return;
He would not leave his sleep below
When she had ceased to mourn-- (Complete Poems 139)

Polidori had made the literary vampire into a Byronic type, with his mysterious, scary brooding and strange attraction to male and female alike. In another poem Emily describes a similar character:

there was something in his face
Some nameless thing they could not trace
And something in his voice's tone
Which turned their blood as chill as stone
The ringlets of his long black hair
Fell o'er a cheek most ghastly fair
Youthful he seemed--but worn as they
Who spent too soon their youthful day
When his glance drooped 'twas hard to quell
Unbidden feelings sudden swell
. . . (105)

The person the speaker describes could well be Heathcliff, or Rochester for that matter, another Byronic hero. In a Gothic poem called "Written in Aspin Castle," Brontë portrays an actual revenant--a returning spirit:

For around their hearths they'll tell the tale
And every listener swears it true
How wanders there a phantom pale
With spirit-eyes of dream blue-- (140)

Like the vampire, this spirit is "unforgiven." He "Wanders unsheltered shut from heaven / An outcast for eternity" (142). Nevertheless, poems such as Number 138 (with the line "I know our souls are all divine," Complete Poems 150) and the well-known one that begins, "No coward soul is mine" (Number 167), a favorite of Emily Dickinson (Farr 3), with lines like "O God within my breast" and "Vain are the thousand creeds / That move men's hearts, unutterably vain" (182),--these poems suggest Emily Brontë does not literally (or consciously) believe in the existence of vampires.

Nevertheless, as Twitchell has shown, Emily and her sister use vampire imagery in their novels to characterize Heathcliff and Bertha Rochester, and to some extent, I believe, Catherine Earnshaw and Rochester himself. Twitchell writes:

Emily Brontë resuscitated the vampire in the poetic characterization of Heathcliff while her sister was doing the same with Bertha Rochester. For Heathcliff (at least according to Nelly Dean) acts as if he were a vampire, devouring both Earnshaws and Lintons for his own vivification, while Bertha has to be sequestered in the attic lest her libidinal desires destroy the men-folk. (6, italics Twitchell's)

Of the four main characters in the two novels (Catherine/Heathcliff, Jane/Rochester), only Jane is exempt from vampire characterization, but she has her shadow figure, her "dark double" as Gilbert and Gubar call her (360), in Bertha.⁸

In folklore, vampires are made--discovered if you will--after death, although people may in life suspect they will become vampires. Heathcliff is made into a creature resembling one by the way others treat him--by their making him a scapegoat. Besides "gipsy" and "vagabond" (E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights 45), Heathcliff is called (here by the elder Mr. Linton) "'a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway'" (39). Hindley's treatment of Heathcliff, Nelly says, "was enough to make a fiend of a saint," and he seems "possessed of something diabolical" (51) as he plans his revenge. Shamed by Catherine's transformation into a young lady after five weeks at Thrushcross Grange and jealous of the attention and affection she receives from Edgar Linton, Heathcliff develops what today we'd call a poor self-image. To Nelly he says: "I wish I had light hair and a fair skin, and was dressed and behaved as well, and had a chance of being as rich as he [Edgar] will be!" (44). Of course he does go away after overhearing Catherine tell Nelly "it would degrade her to marry him [Heathcliff]" (63) but without hearing Catherine's declaration "Nelly, I am Heathcliff" (64). Ironically, Heathcliff does get the money and gentleman status he longs for, but as we know he returns too late, for Catherine has already married Linton. Like Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray (who shares vampiric traits with Heathcliff; see Hort 156-203), Heathcliff has become possessed by the vampire archetype, a victim of what Jung calls "psychic inflation" (see Two Essays 143).

Catherine, although not an outsider, shares vampiric traits with Heathcliff. As children, they scheme "naughty plan [s] of revenge" (E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights 36). In a fit of anger at Nelly, Catherine pinches her violently (55). She is highly-strung and difficult--just the sort of person who according to folklore would be a candidate for vampirism. In Literature and Evil, Georges Bataille speculates that Catherine and Heathcliff's "love can be reduced to the refusal to give up an infantile freedom which had not been amended by the laws of society or of conventional politeness" (6). Catherine not only refuses to relinquish "infantile freedom"; she also quests for the power she's denied as a female. To this extent she, like Heathcliff, is a scapegoat. Jungian analyst Julia McAfee's comments are apropos here: "The vampire describes a psychological process where the struggle into being through love has gone awry. Vampirism is a paradigm of a blood-sucking, life-sucking love, a fatal possession" (quoted by Birge 23). Catherine and Heathcliff are together possessed by the same archetype projected onto each other. In her search for power in a patriarchal culture, she has failed to understand the only power she has is in herself--in Heathcliff, a projection of herself. She is as mean-spirited and self-centered, as evil if you will, as any vampire, but unlike Heathcliff she has no power over others, no power to turn them into vampiric creatures like herself--exactly what Heathcliff does to Isabella, his son Linton, Hareton, and the younger Catherine. For in a patriarchal society such as that in which Catherine lives, the power lies in the hands of men. After all, it is Mr. Rochester who controls Bertha, not the other way round. Thus it is ironic that the only power Catherine can exercise is her emotional power over Edgar and Heathcliff.

Heathcliff's vampiric power to affect others extends to Edgar Linton. Catherine's legal husband has no real power over Heathcliff, who declares vampirically, "The moment her [Catherine's] regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out, and drank his blood!" (115). Speaking of hearts, Heathcliff accuses Catherine of betraying her own heart by rejecting him and marrying Linton (124). Further evidence that Emily Brontë has the vampire in mind in her characterization of Heathcliff is Heathcliff's threat to Nelly that if she neglects to have him buried in the way he demands, no minister at the service and his coffin laid next to Catherine's, Nelly "shall prove practically, that the dead are not annihilated!" (253). Heathcliff wants no minister to say anything over him because "I have nearly attained my heaven, and that of others is altogether unvalued and uncoveted by me!" Catherine herself once dreamt that she had gone to heaven, and as she tells Nelly: "heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy" (62). Catherine and Heathcliff prefer their own self-made heaven to the traditional Christian one. Their depictions as vampiric creatures constitute an inversion of Christian conversion--instead of the cleansing, healing blood of Christ, they figuratively convert each other by sucking the blood from each other. Possessed by the vampire archetype, a combination of the contrasexual/shadow/ trickster archetypes, they fed on each other in a co-dependent relationship that can only lead to their mutual destruction.

Other vampiric actions of Heathcliff include digging up Catherine's grave. Just after she is buried, he digs down to her coffin, only to apprehend Cathy's presence above him. Relieved with the assurance she is with him, he refills the grave. One way to interpret this is to see her as having become a vampire--if not literally, then figuratively, as in the early scene with Lockwood when she tries to get into Wuthering Heights. Yet it is the child Cathy in Lockwood's nightmare and it is her blood he sheds on the broken windowpane. She is a child in Lockwood's dream because her emotional growth has matured no further than the childhood companionship she shared with Heathcliff. Marigny observes the following: "A young man who commits the transgression of opening a tomb to see once more the face of his beloved runs the risk of discovering a grimacing devil, or even a vampire" (23). Seventeen and a half years later Heathcliff again digs up Catherine's grave--or rather the sexton who's digging Edgar Linton's grave next to hers does it for him. This time he sees her face still preserved (218)--a sign that she is a vampire according to folklore (Barber 19).

However we interpret these events, the imagery is clearly that of vampirism, and another conclusion can be drawn: there is no psychic unity, no individuation for this pair. To become individuated one must mature into a fully adult personality. Catherine and Heathcliff never mature beyond their childish bond: they remain puerile to their respective ends. This is not entirely their fault, of course. A heartless, prudish, stratified, patriarchal culture has interfered with the would-be lovers (they are never physically lovers) and their psychic growth has been stunted so that they never grow beyond a stage in which they can only identify with ego gratification. The anima and the animus are archetypes one accommodates in mature, adult life, if one accommodates them at all. Catherine and Heathcliff never mature; they never grow up.

If there is no individuation in Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre is quite another story. It is a realistic novel with improbable, as well as Gothic elements, of which the vampire motif is a part. Tamar Heller interprets the novel as a combination of "two traditional plot lines":

the tale of the woman alone--a female bildungsroman whose independent heroine is a significant innovation in a nineteenth-century context--and the tale of the woman and man, represented by the romance between Jane and Rochester. (49)

Tom Winnifrith also recognizes the originality of Jane Eyre, whose author he calls "a pioneer in breaking away from the conventionalities of the Silver Fork School into a frank first-person narrative with the narrator giving full rein to her feelings" (103). Like Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre's continuing popularity, including the several film versions of both novels, attests to its archetypal appeal. Western civilization has produced far more heroes than heroines, and Jane Eyre is probably the first serious work of fiction in the West that creates a heroine who achieves individuation. Unlike Heathcliff and Catherine, Jane avoids possession by any negative archetype. If she is possessed by an archetype, it is the archetype of love, and this possession empowers her to become her own self--a whole woman.

Like Heathcliff, she enters the story a scapegoat, a ten-year-old orphan in the family of her widowed aunt by marriage, Mrs. Reed. Bullied by her fourteen-year-old cousin, John Reed, Jane is "the scapegoat of the nursery" (C. Brontë, Jane Eyre 13), confined to the "red-room" unjustly. Moglen correctly identifies the red-room as "a terrifying womb-world from which she is born into a new state of being" (111). Adrienne Rich writes of Jane at this period of her life: "the temptation of victimization is never far away" (92). That the room is red, the color of blood, is significant from my point of view, for like Heathcliff and Bertha, the temptation Jane faces is to become the vampire-like creature people would be only too ready to see her as.

The scapegoatism that confronts Jane, not to mention Heathcliff and Bertha, says as much about the people who do the scapegoating as it does about the victims. As Jungian analyst Erich Neumann notes in Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, scapegoatism is "projection of the shadow," a method of displacing guilt and other unwelcome psychic components. Aliens and other outsiders are particularly apt victims: "The fight against heretics, political opponents and national enemies is actually the fight against our own religious doubts, the insecurity of our own political position, and the one-sidedness of our own national viewpoint" (52). The Reeds project their fear of poverty and dependency onto Jane, just as fears of contamination, stigmatization, sexual excess, and a host of unknown components of the shadow archetype are projected onto Heathcliff and Bertha. As a governess, Jane is also treated shabbily by Rochester's haughty aristocratic friends. How one reacts to being scapegoated is a measure of character. Heathcliff and Bertha incorporate the projections into themselves to their psychic (and physical) destruction. Although he may look like a gentleman and own property, at heart Heathcliff remains the ostracized demon-gypsy, the vampire-like creature almost everyone labels him, relying for self worth only on his impossible "love" (obsession would be a more appropriate term) for Catherine. Bertha has been driven insane. Only Jane among these scapegoats survives to become, in Rich's words, "a person determined to live, and to choose her life with dignity, integrity, and pride" (93).

As a child and later an adolescent at Lowood, Jane grows into an independently minded young woman, ready to begin the individuation process. She has accomplished the adolescent tasks of ego affirmation, confirmation of her dominant attitude type, introversion, and selection of a persona. She is a teacher and becomes the governess of Mr. Rochester, hired to teach his ward, and probable love child, Adèle Varens.¹⁰

In Jungian psychology, the encounter with the shadow comes first in the adult individuation process (Snider 14-15). Although Jane has had to deal with many shadow figures (Mr. Brocklehurst comes immediately to mind along with all the Reeds; though technically the shadow is symbolized by a figure of the same gender, no one would deny Brocklehurst is a villain, full of shadow traits), Bertha is obviously the most prominent shadow figure with whom she has to deal. Those who, like Linda Peterson, may scoff at the vampiric interpretation of the Brontë novels I am discussing can hardly deny that Bertha is meant to be interpreted as, if not an actual vampire, a creature like a vampire. Moglen accepts this simple fact and links it with "fear of the female":

The fear of the female is common among civilized as well as primitive men. Since it is a crucial product and cause of Victorian repression, we are not surprised that Berthe [sic] is a vampire: one of those who haunted the Victorian imagination. Jane identifies her in this way in describing the nighttime visitation and Berthe [sic] does, in fact, suck Mason's [her brother's] blood [. . .] as she tries to suck her husband's. She would deprive him, Rochester knows, of his energy, his vitality, his manhood. (127-28)

We are reminded here that the vampire's first victims are those he or she knew and loved in life. Also, note that Rochester calls Bertha a "hideous demon" (277) who "allured" him (269) in typical vampire fashion. Even Jane describes her as a "clothed hyena" (258). Earlier Bertha had actually bitten her brother, Richard Mason: "'She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart'" (187). Significantly, Bertha's attack takes place under a full moon, for, as Twitchell notes, the vampire is "energized" by moonlight (10). During the session after Jane and Rochester's aborted wedding Bertha's attack on Rochester is described thus: "the lunatic sprang and grappled his throat viciously and laid her teeth to his cheek" (258), but he escapes and ties her up. The imagery is clearly straight out of vampire lore.

Jane runs the risk, in Brontë's and the typical Victorians' view, of becoming a Bertha were she to give into her libidinous desires for Rochester, never mind that the Victorians' attitudes toward women and sex were, speaking generally, twisted. Bertha, as the symbol of the shadow for Jane, represents both negative and positive possibilities, for by definition all archetypes are bipolar--both positive and negative or else neutral. The sexual empowerment of the archetype of love and passion (of Eros and Dionysus) is what Bertha represents. As Barbara Birge says in her discussion of Bram Stoker's Dracula, "potency is a sexual, generative, Dionysian, and healing kind of power. Such power is the potency Persephone, Eve, and Mina [in the film] sought to regain through their relationships" (33). To this list I add Jane. To preserve her psychic integrity, to incorporate the shadow qualities--negative and positive, Jane must acknowledge her kinship with Bertha, yet "save" her sexual fulfillment for matrimony. Otherwise she risks becoming that most forlorn of Victorian persons: the "fallen woman." She does the former by expressing sympathy for the woman whose existence has robbed her of her hopes for happiness in marriage. "'Sir,' she says to Rochester, "'[. . .] you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady: you speak of her with hate--with vindictive antipathy. It is cruel--she cannot help being mad'" (265). Jane must now return to earth, so to speak, from the fantasy--her projected bliss with Rochester--she has been living. She must leave Rochester and Thornfield secretly and strike out on her own with virtually nothing of material value in her possession.

Having accommodated the shadow, Jane must accommodate the animus if she is to become a whole person. First, however, in a section that is rich with symbolism she must harrow hell as it were. The moon in the form of a mother had urged her to "flee temptation!" (281). If the moon had a negative power over the vampiric Bertha, it has benevolent power over Jane. She finds herself at a crossroads, "where four roads meet" (284), a place symbolizing choice. An "outcast" now, her heart "impotent as a bird with both wings broken" (285), her only relation is "the universal mother, Nature" (284). Mother Nature is all right for one night. Jane even has a sort of spiritual awakening with a masculine God: "Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky Way. Remembering what it was--what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light--I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made [. . .]" (285). However, the following day, appropriately using capitalized nouns to personify abstractions, a method that harks back to the Age of Enlightenment, Want and Necessity rear their heads; and she realizes not only the negative side of the Earth Mother, but also of her fellow human beings, none of whom help her until, suffering from terrible despair and physical exhaustion, she is rescued from a rainstorm by St. John, Diana, and Mary Rivers--a remarkable example of what Jung calls synchronicity, for these three are her cousins, a fact they discover only much later (339).¹¹

The local parson, St. John is planning to go to India as a missionary. He eventually finds work for Jane as a schoolmistress and offers to take her to India as his working wife, although he has no passion for her. Like Dr. John Graham Bretton in Charlotte Brontë's Villette (1853), St. John has a "Grecian" profile: he is fair, youthful, good looking. Yet Jane does not love him; she is still in love with Rochester. Here Jane is about the same age, "near nineteen" (305), Catherine Earnshaw Linton was when she died, yet the contrast between the two could not be more vivid. Whereas Jane has acted throughout with intelligence and integrity under harsh circumstances, Catherine had acted with self interest alone and under relatively easy circumstances, marrying a man she didn't really love simply because she desired money, property, and social position. Jane, in her own way just as passionate as Catherine (albeit she is introverted and Catherine is extraverted), is now tempted to do what society would expect of her--to marry a man of the cloth, closer to her own age than is Rochester (St. John is about ten years older than Jane; Rochester about twenty). As a symbol of the animus, St. John would be a man of the word, the logos, but Jane is herself a scholar, like St. John an introverted-thinking type, already familiar with the word. Her personal myth requires someone more her opposite--more physically active, wild, passionate, experienced in the larger world, an extraverted-sensation type such as Rochester. He is the senex, the older partner in terms of age and experience; she is the puella, the young woman who is stronger in terms of character and values. Together they would make a whole.

What Jane does not want is a vampire, yet Rochester has some vampiric traits. She describes him thus upon first running into him:

I traced the general points of middle height, and considerable breadth of chest. He had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow; his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted . . .

He is neither "handsome" nor "heroic-looking" (99). All this suits her accurate image of herself as a "plain Jane." But it also could describe a Heathcliff or a vampire. It is a given in Brontë scholarship that both Heathcliff and Rochester are Byronic types. Given the Gothic features of both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, the Byronic characteristics of Polidori's vampire, Lord Ruthven, and the popularity of Varney the Vampire, published serially seven years earlier than Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre (Twitchell 122), the character of any Byronic hero would likely resonate with vampiric implications. Polidori, in fact, deliberately chose to make Ruthven Byronic in order to get revenge on Byron, with whom he had not got along. So he makes the vampire an aristocrat, an innovation from folklore, in which virtually anybody could be a vampire. Ruthven has "irresistible powers of seduction" (Polidori 269) for both men and women, very much like Byron. Furthermore, Ruthven takes delight in ruining his female victims, so that they fall "from the pinnacle of unsullied virtue, down to the lowest abyss of infamy and degradation" (269). Although she is not an adulteress, this is a fairly apt description of what Heathcliff does to Isabella, who was so irresistibly drawn to him. Whether or not Bertha was virtuous before her marriage to Edward Rochester, Rochester makes it clear she commits adultery after the wedding. Perhaps this is a case where the victim is made into the villain. If she seduced him into marriage in the first place, he becomes a seducer or allows himself to be seduced again on the Continent once Bertha has gone mad and been incarcerated at Thornfield. Perhaps Bertha has turned Rochester into a potential vampire. Perhaps W. H. Auden's famous lines, "Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return" (86), apply to both Rochester and Bertha. Additionally Byronic is the fact Rochester has a big secret--the very existence of Bertha. Both Heathcliff and Rochester are exceedingly moody, another Byronic trait.

My point is not that Rochester is depicted as a vampire as are Bertha and Heathcliff, but that like Catherine he has some vampiric traits. Had Jane married him before his injuries he would have dragged her down, so to speak, whether Bertha lived or not, for as a wealthy Victorian aristocrat, he had all the power. Vampiric relationships are about power, about controlling the weaker person, sucking his or her blood and vitiating him or her. That is why a healthy relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine was impossible, and that is why before the destruction of Thornfield a healthy relationship between Edward Rochester and Jane Eyre would have been impossible.

Bertha, who is almost literally a vampire, must be destroyed for two reasons. First, psychically she symbolizes the shadow for Jane and must disappear from her conscious life once Jane has accommodated the shadow. Second, she is obviously a legal impediment. Because she is mad, Rochester cannot divorce her (Showalter 122). Everyone knows the way to kill a vampire is to drive a stake through his or her heart and cut off his or her head. Perhaps not so well known is that cremation is just as acceptable a method. Bertha dies aflame, falling from Thornfield, "her brains and blood . . . scattered" (C. Brontë, Jane Eyre 377). The important thing is to "render the body inert" (Barber 167), and that's exactly what Brontë does with Bertha.

Rochester, never having become a full-blown vampire, does not have to die. Losing his sight is enough to deprive him of his power. Early in their relationship, Jane describes Rochester's eyes as "dark, irate, and piercing" (106); "he had great, dark eyes, and very fine eyes too" (115). Do I go too far to say she is entranced by those eyes? I think not. It is with his "trance," remember, that the vampire "will put the victim under his power" (Twitchell 10). Without his eyes, Rochester's sinister power is gone. It is as if the dregs of his psyche have been destroyed; only the valuable parts are left, the parts that with Jane will create a whole. Now she can unite with him as the positive animus, fully conscious and equal to each other.

Because of his infirmity, Jane is forced to become more extraverted, to become his eyes. ("Literally, I was [. . .] the apple of his eye" 397.) Her thinking and feeling functions have long been developed, for she has always been a scholar and felt instinctively what was right and what was wrong. When St. John proposes to her, her intuition function is sufficiently developed to tell her such a union would be wrong; indeed, she intuits moving to India would kill her. When she intercepts Rochester's telepathic message, another example of synchronicity, her intuition is perhaps most keen. She finally develops her weakest function, sensation, by becoming her husband's eyes and by physically uniting with him (together they produce a son).

Having developed all four functions of consciousness, having accommodated the shadow and overcome scapegoating, having been united with the contrasexual, she has become a whole person, and with the legacy from her uncle, an "independent woman" (382) financially, who chooses to join with another:

for with him I was at perfect ease, because I knew I suited him; all I said or did seemed either to console or revive him. Delightful consciousness! It brought to life and light my whole nature: in his presence I thoroughly lived; and he lived in mine. (384)

Jane Eyre has realized her personal myth.

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Victorian Suicide: Mad Crimes and Sad Histories

Barbara T. Gates, Alumni Distinguished Professor of English, University of Delaware

Brontë's Wuthering Heights, set in 1771-18O3 but published in 1847, alludes both to pre-1823 burial customs and to those of 1823. Brontë seems to have felt free to use both the laws in effect during the time of her story and those governing early Victorian times. In narrating the details surrounding Hindley Earnshaw's death (1784), for example, she draws upon the earlier statutes. Although the exact cause of Hindley's death is never determined, all who saw him at the end claim that he died in a state of drunkenness. Mr. Kenneth, who tells Nelly about the death, says that he "died true to his character, drunk as a lord" (p. 153). And Heathcliff, when Nelly asks if she may proceed with suitable arrangements for Hindley's funeral, retorts that "correctly . . . that fool's body should be buried at the cross-roads, without ceremony of any kind. I happened to leave him ten minutes, yesterday afternoon; and, in that interval, he fastened the two doors of the house against me, and he has spent the night in drinking himself to death deliberately!" (WH, 153)

The precise circumstances of Hindley's death, which are reported in considerable detail, have important implications for the course of Brontë's novel. For if Hindley did die drunk and debauched, as both Kenneth and Heathcliff indicate he did, in the eighteenth century he would automatically have been considered a suicide, exactly as Heathcliff suggests. Even more importantly, in that case his property could legally have been forfeited to the Crown, with nothing left for Hareton arid hence nothing left for Heathcliff to employ as a tool in his revenge. It is probably for this reason that Heathcliff allows Nelly to perform proper burial rights for Hindley, thus relinquishing a more immediate revenge upon Hindley's dead body while gaining a long-term hold on the entire Earnshaw family.

Earlier, just before coming to the Heights, Nelly had consulted with Linton's lawyer about Hindley's death and had requested that the lawyer come to the Heights with her. His refusal is telling, for he advises that "Heathcliff be let alone, affirming that if the truth were known, Hareton would be found little else than a beggar"(WH, 153). The "truth" here may be that Heathcliff is Hareton's only hope because he is Hindley's creditor; or that the lawyer, probably Mr. Green, is already under Heathcliff's influence. But it may also be that Hindley's death as a suicide is better left ignored, primarily because of the possibility of forfeiture.

Catherine Earnshaw's death precedes her brother's by only half a year, and it too can be considered suicidal. There is little doubt that Catherine knows how to induce her own ill health, even though she does not intend suicide when she first embarks upon her fast in Chapter II. At this point, totally breaking her own body and heart is, for Catherine, still "a deed to be reserved for a forlorn hope" (WH, 101). What happens, however, is that Catherine's body only partially cooperates with her will, and Nelly's assumption that Catherine is in total control of her situation is a tragic miscalculation. After only three days' fast, Catherine is already past saving. When she realizes that neither Linton nor Heathcliff has become genuinely alarmed and then chooses not to die, she cannot reverse her headlong journey toward destruction.

The important scene before her mirror (WH, 106) already spells this doom for Catherine, as Q. D. Leavis has realized (Leavis, 146). Catherine is shocked when she sees her own reflection because she seems to understand what Yorkshire folklore dictates: that sick people should never look at themselves in a mirror. If they do, their souls may take flight from their weak bodies by being projected into the mirror, and this can cause their death. In accordance with this belief, immediately after she sees her reflection in the mirror, Catherine is convinced that she really will die. Leavis suggests that this realization replaces Catherine's fear of ghosts, anxiously expressed just before: "I hope it will not come out when you are gone! Oh! Nelly, the room is haunted!" (WH, 106). I believe, however, that the realization and the fear are even more closely related. For Catherine actually seems to consider herself to be the ghost once she recognizes that the face in the mirror is her own. " 'Myself,' she gasped, 'and the clock is striking twelve! It's true then; that's dreadful!' " (WH, 106). Catherine's utter horror here stems from her superstitious belief that suicides become restless ghosts. (See Cavendish, 555; and Gutch, 42, 48). She now assumes herself to be a suicide, and it is this aspect of Catherine's unnerving realization before the mirror that incites her subsequent raving about the ghosts at Gimmerton Kirkyard. [09/10]

After this scene, there is only one more meeting between Catherine and Heathcliff before her actual death. On that occasion their dialogue is flied with allusions to Catherine's suicide and her would-be haunting of Heathcliff. Catherine now feels that she will never be at peace; while Heathcliff repeatedly expresses regret over what he feels is Catherine's self-murder and his relationship to it. In desperation, Heathcliff can forgive Catherine her murder of him but not her own willed death, which she in turn blames on him. All this seemingly metaphorical talk of murder reflects suicide law. Any accomplice of a suicide was legally considered his/her murderer, (see Jacob, pp.3473-3475) so that, ironically, the protagonists' accusations of one another could, were they true, carry the weight of law, as well as of guilt.

Catherine is not, however, buried as a suicide. Nelly wonders "after the wayward and impatient existence she had led, whether she merited a haven of peace at last" (WH 137-38), but after looking at her in death, decides that she probably does, Instead, Catherine is interred in the corner of the Kirkyard under the wall, "to the surprise of the villagers" (WH, 140). Because the local people did not know of the means of Catherine's death, they might have expected that she would lie either in the chapel with the Lintons or by the tombs of the Earnshaws. Their wonderment is understandable when one recalls another folk belief about suicides. Particularly after the 1823 law, when suicides could legally be buried in churchyards, it became customary in parts of northern Britain for their bodies to be laid below the churchyard wall, so that no one would be likely to walk over their graves (see Westermarck, 255-256). The place of Catherine's burial would thus have had particular significance for the folk of Gimmerton, who would no doubt have inferred the nature of her death from the location of her grave.

Unquestionably the place of Catherine's burial determines Heathcliff’s own choice of a burial site and consequently his own need not to become discovered as a suicide. Because of his reputation and his doubtful place in the Gimmerton community, it is far less likely that Heathcliff would be extended the kind of pity that had allowed for the churchyard burials of Hindley and Catherine. He knows this and knows too of the possibility of interment in the public highway and is therefore scrupulous about not appearing suicidal. This accounts for the long delay of his own death, which continues to trouble the novel's critics; recent examples include Mitchell, 1973. Unfortunately for Heathcliff's union with Catherine, Linton dies before Heathcliff does and is the one to be buried in the grave next to hers. Lawyer Green, now the tool of Heathcliff, does suggest that Linton be buried appropriately in the chapel. Linton's death is of natural causes and his family all lie there. But Green, though under Heathcliff's influence, [10/11] must abide by the stipulations of Linton's will, which states Linton's desire to be buried with Catherine. Nelly, for one, issues "loud protestations against any infringement of its directions" (WH, 226).

Less than a year elapses between Linton's death and Heathcliff’s, the year in which Heathcliff and Wuthering Heights are so intensely haunted by Catherine that even the prosaic Lockwood is influenced to dream of her. Toward the end of this time, Nelly observes how isolated and peculiar Heathcliff has become and warns him against taking his own life. As she notes, he undergoes his most dramatic set of changes from the time of his curious hunting accident, when "his gun burst" while he was "out on the hills by himself" (WH, 246). Finding himself still alive after the accident, Heathcliff forces himself to reach home, despite a heavy loss of blood, Detained by this accident, lie is brought into closer contact with Cathy and Hareton. Now, however, as his tormentings of them only serve to remind him of Catherine, he becomes affected by the strange tedium vitae that was considered the cause of so many nineteenth-century suicides. ²²Quotations from Wuthering Heights "I cannot continue in this condition," he tells Nelly. "I have to remind myself to breathe -- almost to remind my heart to beat!" (WH, 256). He also forgets to eat but makes the attempt when Nelly urges him and then takes great care to tell her that "It is not my fault, that I cannot eat or rest. I assure you it is through no settled designs" (WH, 262).

As he begins to fail, the one thing uppermost in Heathcliff's mind is his burial. To Nelly he gives detailed instructions for its procedures: "..you remind me of the manner that I desire to be buried in. It is to be carried to the churchyard, in the evening.. No minister need come; nor need anything be said over me" (WH, 263). Each of Heathcliff's requests is in accord with the 1823 statute governing the burial of suicides: the hour, the place, and the lack of a Christian burial service. Nelly seems to) realize their significance. In a moment of insight she brings up the fear that has haunted Heathdiff ever since the day of Catherine's death: "And supposing you persevered in your obstinate fast, and died by that means, and they refused to bury you in the precinct of the Kirk?" (WH, 263)

Heathcliff's only means of recourse now are to charge Nelly with the business of moving his body, so that he can be with Catherine, and directly to threaten Nelly with haunting should she fail to comply. The threat seems sufficient to frighten the superstitious servant, and the next evening when Heathcliff does die, Nelly conceals her suspicions about his death from Kenneth: "Kenneth was perplexed to pronounce of what disorder the master died, I concealed the fact of his having swallowed nothing for four days, fearing it might lead to trouble, and [11/12] then, I am persuaded he did not abstain on purpose; it was the consequence of his strange illness, not the cause" (WH, 264). Her actions now free Nelly to carry out Heathcliff's instructions to the letter and "to the scandal of the whole neighbourhood" (WH, 265) Shocked by Heathcliff's interment side by side with the married Lintons, the people also appear to know the meaning of Heathcliff's burial without Christian rites. It is not long afterward that under the Nab the local shepherd boy sees the ghosts of what he must now consider as two suicides, Heathcliff and Catherine. In the end, Lockwood's much-discussed final words in Wuthering Heights take on added irony in light of the folklore of suicide. Referring to the gravesites of Catherine, Linton, and Heathcliff, Lockwood wonders "how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth" (WH, 266). But anyone knowing the customs surrounding suicide in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain -- as Emily Brontë did -- could, on the contrary, hardly imagine quiet slumbers for them.

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A. E. Housman (1859–1936). A Shropshire Lad. 1896.

LXII. Terence, this is stupid stuff


‘TERENCE, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,	5
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, ’tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.	10
Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’

Why, if ’tis dancing you would be,	15
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,	20
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot	25
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
The mischief is that ’twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,	30
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,	35
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,	40
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure	45
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
’Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:	50
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head	55
When your soul is in my soul’s stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,	60
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,	65
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;	70
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told.	75
Mithridates, he died old.

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Musée des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W.H. Auden

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Browning's Portrait of a Renaissance Man: Alphonso II D' este, Duke of Ferrara, in "My Last Duchess" (1842)

Philip V. Allingham, Contributing Editor, Victorian Web; Faculty of Education, Lakehead University (Ontario)

In reading Robert Browning's Renaissance-set dramatic monologue "My Last Duchess," one must bear in mind that "Browning is not primarily concerned to tell a story. . . or describe a mood . . .: his aim is to depict a man as he is, with such autobiographical flashbacks as may be necessary to explain the character of the speaker" (Ian Jack, Browning's Major Poetry, p. 196). In his psychological portrait of the Duke of Ferrara Browning was as much inspired by his general notions of Italian court portraiture as he was by any specific individual--and yet there is an actual historical figure behind the poem.

John Pope-Hennessy, in The Portrait in the Renaissance (1979), feels that the Renaissance vision of man's self-sufficient nature marks the beginning of the modern world, the world of scientific thought and materialism. The Renaissance assertion of man's place--the individual's place--in the scheme of things coincided with the humanistic art initiated by Giotto in Italy. Although somewhat idealized, those faces that peer out at us from Renaissance portraits and paintings evoke an immediate and sympathetic response because they remind us of our own, reflecting all the human follies, passions, desires, and disappointments that we see in the mirror every day.

Part of the appeal of Browning's Duke is that there is someone like him somewhere in every reader; and, although Browning knows better than to attempt an outright exorcism, his poetry has a salutary if not always flattering way of making readers confront this ducal reader or Duke within. [Tucker, p. 181]

The historical basis for the character of the Duke, however, is not merely a type, but a very real individual, Alphonso II of Ferrara, a member of the extravagant D'este family, who satisfied their obsession for luxury and money by borrowing and by arranging substantial marriage dowries. There is a depth to this psychological study, quite apart from the dramatic tension created by the reader's imagining the disturbed envoy of the Count, eager to escape the portrait of the most recent duchess and its concomitant revelation of the owner's sociopathic psyche. This dramatic action, as Thomas Blackburn argues in Robert Browning: A Study of His Poetry (1967), renders the poem "a novel [which] in about sixty lines conveys a sense of the infinite complexity of life, of the under and overtones of existence" (p. 173).

Under Browning's hand, the Duke becomes a portrait of a type: the petty aristocrats who governed the city-states of Renaissance Italy. "There she stands / As if alive," remarks Alphonso of his wife's portrait: however, he finds the picture preferable to the original because he now has total control over who will view her and because she can no longer mar her beauty by unseeming behaviour or emotion. Ironically,

Browning's Duke, displaying the picture of his last Duchess, is himself a full-length portrait. His dignity, courtesy, cruelty, interest in sculpture, in painting, unite, unconsciously and without exaggeration, to show this cross-section of a Renaissance aristocrat. As Browning's aim too is not moral instruction but the dispassionate study of individual character, good and evil qualities are allowed to intertwine in the same perplexing fashion as in actual life. [Palmer, p. 133]

Although Browning does not make overt statements about the Duke's moral turpitude, he nonetheless gives us clues as to how we, along with the implied auditor, the Count's envoy, are to react to the Duke. For example, a significant piece of unintentional self-revelation is the Duke's proudly pointing out his statue of "Neptune, / Taming a sea-horse" (lines 54-55), in fact an emblem of the Duke's attempt to dominate his former duchess as if she were an unruly animal. The statue becomes a metaphor for the Duke's view of himself, as well as a second object lesson for the envoy (the portrait itself being the first) who has just attempted the presumption of preceding his imperious host down the stairs.

But there is an even greater, unconscious revelation of character in the Duke's proprietary command: "Notice" (line 54).

Neptune is seen in an attitude of doing what the Duke cannot do, . . . [since] the latter can only have ordered to be "cast" a symbol that might represent his desires in "taming," subjugating, vanquishing, bending to his will--or, in the form of a bronze group, his accomplishment in art impossible in his life. [Berman, p. 85]

The Duke's having commissioned a statue in which he figures himself as Greco-Roman the earth-shaker in a display of power is a sort of wish-fulfillment. Perhaps, as Herbert F. Tucker, Jr., has hypothesized, encasing both his last duchess and himself in objets d'art is his only means of exerting control of those vital forces which continually frustrate his understanding:

He literally encloses his Duchess in a tomb or convent and imaginatively encloses himself in an icon of possession, a bronze statue of Neptune, in order to avoid confronting what he perceives as an absence of meaning in his surroundings, in his marriage, and in himself. [p. 182]

The irony of the Duke's conceiving himself as godlike is that the real Alphonso was impotent--either congenitally, or as a consequence of a tournament injury sustained in youth (according to Berman, p. 100)--and, therefore, quite incapable of passing on his "gift of a nine-hundred years-old name" (line 33). Historically, by the way, the Count with whom Alfonso II was negotiating was lord of the Tyrol, whose principal city was Innsbruck; so that the Duke's passing reference to the craftsman responsible for the Neptune statue may be a subtle way of implying that he already has some knowledge of and ties with the Count's region which marriage to the Count's daughter will serve to strengthen (Berman, p. 86).

Another fascinating historical footnote is that Browning's other great Renaissance man, the Bishop of St. Praxed's, was likely modeled on Cardinal Ippolito d'Este the Younger, brother to Ercole II, Duke of Ferrara (according to William Clyde De Vane's Browning's Duke, p. 167), making the Duke of "My Last Duchess," Alphonso II (the fifth and last d'Este Duke of Ferrara) his nephew. Further, Browning had encountered Alphonso when researching the life of the poet Torquato Tasso (whom the Duke of Ferrara had imprisoned) for Sordello (1840).

Like his uncle the Bishop, the Duke in Browning's poem fails to see the irony in his artistic commissions and aesthetic pronouncements because he is blind to his own repressive, sterile nature. The Duke especially, as Tucker points out, may be taken as a symbol for the sort of reader (or, in the broader sense, interpreter of art) who "imprison[s] the meaning of poems." (p. 181)

The Duke's artists, the sculptor Claus of Innsbruck and the painter Fra Pandolf, have no historical counterparts. They are, in effect, metaphors for the poet himself, for the function of all art is to enable the consumer--the viewer, auditor, or reader--to liberate himself from his own introspective inflexibility by permitting him to see his inner self through the mirror of art. Unfortunately, although a discerning patron, the Duke cannot penetrate beyond the superficial beauty of art to its underlying truth.

In this moral blindness the Duke is also very much a man of his time. The Barberini Pope Urban VIII, who sponsored the sculptor Bernini and condemned the astronomer Galileo, and had all the birds killed in the Vatican gardens, offers a real, historical parallel to Browning's Duke: on the one hand he is positive (a discriminating art-collector and patron who speaks with genuine elegance), and on the other negative (he is a chilling figure who kills off youth and living beauty to replace it with an artistic recreation).

Browning treats the Count's envoy ironically. "Nay, we'll got Together down, sir!" suggests that he is trying to get away from both the Duke and the "trophy" painting that is mute testimony to the owner's ruthlessness. The speaker assumes that he is about to win another fat dowry, but his doing so depends upon the report of the envoy (if his impression is anything like ours, the Duke will not succeed). Ironically, although the Duke so highly .regards his lineage and expensive art, he is in need of money. The poem is patently about the "last" rather than the "first" or "former" duchess, suggesting that the Duke is something of a Bluebeard, the ghastly antagonist of a cautionary tale translated into English in 1729 from Perrault's collection and vastly influential in the Victorian period. At the close of the poem, as the pair walk down the grand staircase of the ducal palace, Browning invites us to construct one of two conclusions for ourselves: either the envoy will support the Duke's "pretence" (meaning "claim," but also implying "act" or "deception"), or he will advise the Count against the marriage.

Brilliantly, Browning has the Duke condemn himself out of his own mouth; although he offers us no judgment himself, the poet would have us judge the Duke and the age in which he ruled. Browning's primary interest is in the villain's psychology, but in vividly, fascinatingly revealing the Duke's motivations the poet reveals him as the product of a definite set of traditions. In accordance with Machiavelli's advice in The Prince, the Duke reveals his power to the envoy by using his late wife's fate as an object lesson. Neptune's taming a seahorse, the bronze statue which the Duke commissioned, is yet another image of brutal domination. Browning sees the Duke as characteristic of the political leaders of the epoch: power, art, sophistication, pitiless tyranny come together in one splendidly-drawn figure. The Duke's superbia is a feature of his character that is reflection of the personalities of such Renaissance giants as Pope Julius II of Agaony and Ecstacy fame and Sigismundo Malatesta, the central figure in Ezra Pound's Cantos.

References

Berman, R. J. Browning's Duke. New York: Richards Rosen Press, 1972.

Blackburn, Thomas. Robert Browning: A Study of His Poetry. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1967.

De Vance, William Clyde. A Browning Handbook. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955.

Jack, Ian. Browning's Major Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon, 1973.

Jerman, B. R. "Browning's Witless Duke." Modern Language Association Journal, June 1957: 488-493.

Palmer, George H. "The Monologue of Browning." Harvard Theological Review, XI, 2 (April 1918): 121-144.

Pope-Hennessy, John. The Portrait in the Renaissance. New York: Bollingen Foundation and Patheon Books, 1966.

Robert Browning The Poems, Volume One. Ed. John Pettigrew and Thomas J. Collins. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981. Pp. 349-350.

Shaw, David W. "Browning's Duke as Theatrical Producer." Victorian Newsletter 29 (Spring 1966): 18-22.

Tucker, F. Herbert, Jr. Browning's Beginnings: The Art of Disclosure. Minneapolis: U. Minnesota Press, 1980.

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Applying Modern Critical Theory to Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess"

Philip V. Allingham, Contributing Editor, Victorian Web; Faculty of Education, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario

In the following readings of Browning's justly famous poem, Professor Allingham shows the different kinds of answers different critical approaches can produce. (Brief explanations of each critical method link to each of the terms below.) You will notice that although these various critical theories ask diffrent questioons and produce different answers, these readings complement — rather than contradict — one another. In other words, in the same way that a cell biologist can ask questions about the physics, biochemistry, genetics, and physiology of a cell and receive differing results, so, too, can a student of literary approach a text in different ways without making the study of literature subjective and a matter largely of personal taste and opinion. [GPL]

1. The poem "My Last Duchess" (complete text) is termed a "dramatic monologue" because

A. it contains three formal elements: an occasion, a speaker, and a hearer. [Formalist]

B. all its words are heard--and are intended to be heard--by an implied auditor. [Formalist]

C. in it we hear only one voice--and as is typical of pre-twentieth-century verse that voice is male. [Feminist]

D. rather than being "narrative," by virtue of its scansion and diction it appears to have been excerpted from the body of a verse drama such as a play by Shakespeare.[Rhetorical]

2. The "voice" or "persona" in the poem "My Last Duchess"

A. enables the poet to synthesize two types of verse, the lyric and the drama. [Formalist]

B. talks about and describes a woman, but never actually quotes that woman. [Feminist]

C. presents the character directly and ironically, without comment by the poet. [New Criticism]

D. creates what one critic has termed "psychography," a text which serves to reveal the inner workings of a single character's psychology, values, tastes, and motivations. [Psychological]

3. Browning's Duke speaks in noble poetry through which the reader

A. rejects the behaviour of the speaker in favour of the behaviour of the woman who opposed him. [Feminist]

B. responds negatively when the speaker assumes everything he says meets with the auditor's approval. [New Criticism]

C. mentally constructs a vivid portrait of a deeply disturbed and disturbing individual. [Psychological]

D. comes to comprehend the courtesy, dignity, artistic taste, and essential cruelty of a Renaissance autocrat. [New Historicist]

4. The phrase "Last Duchess" (as given in the title and repeated in the opening line)

A. might suggest more a comparative than an exclusive designation, as would "Late." [ Rhetorical]

B. reflects the woman was, ultimately, more a public "Duchess" than a private "wife." [Feminist]

C. is part of an unspoken title: in his own eyes, there is no poem but only his words to the Count's emissary. [Deconstruction]

D. implies that the Duke is that monster out of fairy tale and myth, a compound of the legendary youth-devouring Minotaur and the wife-collecting murderer Bluebeard from the popular Victorian fairy tale. [Archetypal]

5. In the last part of the poem, the Duke shifts the discussion away from the portrait per se to the negotiations about to begin "below," presumably in a great hall or audience chamber. The diction, shifting from art to business, is now characterized by such words as "gift," "munificence," "ample warrant," "disallowed," "company," and--perhaps most significantly--"dowry."

A. The Duke has already to argue the rightness or justice of his "pretense," which literally means "claim," but is a double entendre implying also "act" and "deception."[New Criticism]

B. Thus, the Duke reveals that everything that has gone before is mere "elegant persiflage" (light banter), a private conversation, and that only now is the real dialogue of competing interests about to begin. [Formalist]

C. In matters artistic, the Duke has assumed a superior position; he, manifesting every outward sign of self-effacing civility as he and his guest are about to join the company, steps back to permit the Count's emissary to accompany him as a social equal. [Psychological]

D. Thus, the Duke implies that the envoy should apply his "history" or "object lesson" (the fate of the unruly former duchess) to the female "object" of the transaction. In alluding to his wealth, nobility, power, and impeccable taste earlier, the Duke was emphasizing what currency he would be bringing to the bargaining table.[Marxist]

6. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

A. The value of a commodity is in direct proportion to its scarcity and desirability; to make the Duchess more valuable, the Duke had her commodified, made into a painting by a certified "Master" to which only the Duke himself controls the access. [Marxist]

B. Since such statues as the one the Duke notes were hardly rare, the Duke ironically may be overvaluing the work which he is so proud of having commissioned. [New Criticism]

C. The statue of Neptune is a psychological projection of the Duke himself as both enjoy dominating what is beautiful, delicate, feminine, and natural. [Psychological]

D. The mention of the material would be unnecessary in a real conversation since the statue's being bronze would be obvious to an observer; therefore, the phrase "cast in bronze" betrays the artificial and textual nature of this one-sided dialogue. [Deconstruction]

7. She had
A heart--(how shall I say?)--too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace--all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least.

A. By her enjoyment of the simple pleasures of life rather than just the expensive products of male ingenuity, the Duchess defined herself as a non-man. [Feminist]

B. The repetitions of the definite article, reinforced by the use of "alike," "all and each," are highly suggestive of those robot-like mechanics that completely define the Duke and the fabricated conventionality within which the Duchess was trapped. [Rhetorical]

C. In order to put at stop to such unrestrained enjoyment and counter his feelings of inadequacy and rejection, the Duke had to do what he asserts he will never do--mentally "stoop" to reprove and correct. [Psychological]

D. The grammatical structure of the sentence by its additive mode of simple enumeration implies the Duchess's failure to discriminate any ranking among the parts, as opposed to the Duke's punctilious gradation of the content. [Formalist]

8. The excellence of the poem, as B. R. Jerman contends, lies in the

A. dramatic irony of the Duke's treatment of the envoy, for he unwittingly reveals his true personality to the Count's representative. [New Criticism]

B. portrait it conveys of Renaissance society, which, though it esteemed feminine beauty, invested power in ruthless rulers such as the Duke as effective and praiseworthy. [New Historicist]

C. Duke's inability to realize that having a real relationship with a woman such as the Duchess would be far more rewarding than owning numerous representations of women. [Feminist]

D. monologue's characterizing arranged marriages among the governing classes of the Renaissance as nothing more than business transactions which commodified beauty. [Marxist]

9. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hand
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

A. The portrait of the last duchess is a symbol of compliance in marriage, which the Duke intimates to the envoy is what he expects from the Count's daughter. [Feminist]

B. The Duke utters the name "Frà Pandolf" three times in order to impress the envoy with his artistic taste and discernment. [Rhetorical]

C. The Duke was egotistically insensitive to the living beauty before him when the Duchess lived, and finds it a wonder only now that it has been transformed into a timeless, ageless beauty that only a work of art can contain. [Psychological]

D. While the real woman inconveniently took pleasure in things other than the Duke, the mechanically reproduced, realistic picture of a photogenic woman is a suitable trophy for a dilettante in that it is a distillation of only her beauty. [Feminist]

10. But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I). . . .

The Duke keeps the full-length portrait covered because

A. like a jealous and emotionally insecure child, he wants to show complete possession of the Duchess's smile. [Psychological]

B. he likes to use it as an object lesson to enforce in others a view of him that obliges them to respect and fear him. [Marxist]

C. he believes he is revealing his taste when in fact he is revealing the traditional masculine pathology that requires a man's wife be entirely subservient to his will.[Feminist]

D. reflecting the poet's sense of phrasing and timing, like a theatrical producer he wants to control the viewer's response by timing the drawing of the curtain as part of his faultless performance as the gracious and cultured host.[Rhetorical]

11. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

The magisterial sweep of the opening lines, as David Shaw contends,

A. in their oracular impressiveness and grammar suggests a parody of the opening of Genesis, in which God "calls" all life into being and names everything He has created. [Reader-Response]

B. establishes from the outset that the Duke appreciates objects of art more than he does the rights of others because the art has tangible, "monetary" value. [Marxist]

C. demonstrates that only "now," after a passage of time, the Duke has forgotten the woman he had to dispose of and is free to admire the virtuosity of the (male) painter who has transcribed that woman's chief commodity, her beauty, in a less threatening form. [Feminist]

D. not only establishes the name of the master-painter who created this "wonder," but implies the supervisory role of the artist's "patron," the Duke, in its creation, as is consistent with the role of the aristocratic patron in Renaissance Italy.[New Historicist]

12. Even had you skill
In speech--which I have not--to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark". . . .

A. The Duke interprets the Duchess's plain enjoyment as impudence and rebellion against her social superior, surrogate father, and master. [Psychological]

B. What is most repulsive in the Duke's manner here is the callous precision of an insane rationalist whose dissociation of logical forms suggests mild schizophrenia. [Psychological]

C. The Duke's continually referring to his auditor as "sir" similarly implies the speaker's feeling that the envoy shares his outlook and interpretation of the Duchess's aberrant conduct, and will endorse the "commands" that the Duke ultimately felt he had to give. [New Criticism]

D. Regardless of what the envoy tells his master of this speech, the putative duchess will still have no part in the negotiations since Italian women of the sixteenth century were treated as chattels rather than legally independent entities. [New Historicist]

13. Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West. . . .

A. The rhymes, which are irrational satellites revolving round the rhetoric, imply that, for example, in the above couplet, the Duchess' "breast" has indeed become for the Duke a sinking sun. [Rhetorical]

B. Her according the natural phenomenon, a common enough event, and the mark of his special grace equal status the Duke interpreted as a diminution of his assumed perfection; such notice would be for the Duke psychologically intolerable. [Psychological]

C. The Duchess, indicates the painter, valued the Duke's "favour" since it occupies first place among her accessories in the portrait, but her painted her clear of those walls which must have been for her nothing but a prison. [New Criticism]

D. For the Duke, exposing the Duchess's lack of discernment is the equivalent of exposing himself as one who could not master her; and that mastery, never realized while she lived, asserts itself by his manipulation of a cord that draws curtains--ironically, scarcely satisfying "control." [Feminist]

14. That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive.

A. The Duke intends to flatter the Count's envoy by giving him the privilege of beholding what he regards as an extraordinarily beautiful work of art. [Psychological]

B. The Duke intends to impress the Count's envoy with his power to command complete and total subservience, that he is no mere princeling, but a genuine autocrat. [Marxist]

C. The Duke indicates to the Count's envoy verbally what the curtains manifestly symbolize, that the lady in the portrait is now dead, not tucked away in a convent. [Deconstruction]

D. The Duke implies to the Count's envoy that the painting is superior to the original because the (male) artist has infused the face with an earnestness and depth of passion that the lady herself lacked. [Feminist]

15. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

A. Browning himself visited Innsbruck and Tyrol just four years before "My Last Duchess" appeared in print, when he was on his way home from Italy in 1838. [Philological]

B. The arrogant affability of the conclusion makes it clear that the Duke is both insane and frighteningly in control, as the perfect, deceptive iambic pentameter couplet asserts. [Formalist]

C. The closing phrase of the poem, "for me," re-establishes the whole proprietary nature of the Duke, and rules out any possibility of a final redemption before he disappears from our ken forever by descending the staircase. [Psychological]

D. Since Alfonso d'Este's grand-aunt owned a similar work, "Un Neptuno sopra un monstro col tridente," the reference to this statue's being in the ducal palace of Ferrara is intended as a piece of historical detailism to prove the text's verisimilitude. [New Historicist]

16. This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive.

A. The poem has the salutary effect of making readers, particularly masculine readers, confront the Duke within themselves. [Feminist]

B. This deliberate ambivalence shows the poet's deliberately departing from historical truth. Browning in an interview once said, "I meant that the commands were that she should be put to death . . . Or he might have had her shut up in a convent." [Deconstruction]

C. The Duke is modeled on Alfonso II, fifth Duke of Ferrara, and the last of the Este family which Browning had dealt with in Sordello; Alfonso II, born in 1533, married Lucrezia de Medici, then fourteen, in 1558. Four years after her death, perhaps caused by poison, in 1561, Alfonso married the daughter of Ferdinand I, Count of Tyrol. [New Historicist]

D. Browning said that the Duke used his wife's supposed shallowness as an excuse--mainly to himself--for taking revenge on one who had unwittingly wounded his absurdly pretentious vanity, by failing to recognize his superiority in even the most trifling matters. [Psychological]

17. I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together.

A. Browning's Duke is a soulless virtuoso, the natural product of a corrupt class system that empowers a proud, arrogant, and exclusive aristocracy. [ Marxist]

B. Browning's psychopathic Duke finds satisfaction only in manipulating and controlling others, the outward and visible signs of his imposing his will being wealth and what wealth enables him to purchase. [Psychological]

C. Browning's theme is the historical tyranny of man over woman--the tyrannical suppression of one nature by another merely on the basis of gender, and not with respect to economic or social necessity. [Feminist]

D. Browning's Duke is the Devil incarnate, inured to murder and ignorant of Christian virtues, a creation intended to be a symbol of pride, materialism, and viciousness of Christian evil, blind to his own probable damnation. [Archetypal]

18. Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design. . . .

A. A gentle "spot of joy" that the artist has captured in the Duchess's cheek will remain undiminished when her imperious Duke, like the real lady herself, is dust and ashes. [Formalist]

B. In sympathy with the observant painter of the poem, Browning invites us to suspend the moral judgments of others and judge for ourselves two studies of human nature, the one a portrait in pigments, the other a portrait in words. [Psychological]

C. In the Italian Renaissance, rulers such as Browning's Duke employed subservient craftsmen--painters, sculptors, poets, musicians, and architects--whose work provides an historical account to us of those fierce and elegant despots who patronized them. [New Historicist]

D. In repeating the name of the artist three times, the Duke implies vaguely that the genius exhibited in the painting is somehow his, and that the choice of artist is itself a higher creative act since the painting was done under his strict supervision--for, after all, Frà Pandolf's proletarian hands did not actually "paint," they merely "worked." [Marxist]

Related Materials

Discussion Questions
The Silent Listener in Browning's "My Last Duchess"

References

Berman, R. J. Browning's Duke. New York: Richards Rosen Press, 1972.

Corson, Hiram. An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1889.

Fotheringham, James. Studies in the Poetry of Robert Browning. London: Kegan, Paul, and Trench, 1887.

Harmon, William, and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook to Literature. 8th edn. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999.

Jack, Ian. Browning's Major Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon, 1973.

Jerman, B. R. "Browning's Witless Duke." Modern Language Association Journal, June 1957: 488-493.

Mitchell, Domhnall. "Browning's 'My Last Duchess'." Explicator 50, 2 (Winter 1992) : 74-75.

Palmer, George H. "The Monologue of Browning." Harvard Theological Review, XI, 2(April 1918) : 121-144.

Poems in English 1530-1940, ed. David Daiches. New York: Ronald, 1950. Pp. 462-463.

Robert Browning The Poems, Volume One. Ed. John Pettigrew and Thomas J. Collins. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981. Pp. 349-350.

Shaw, David W. "Browning's Duke as Theatrical Producer." Victorian Newsletter 29 (Spring 1966): 18-22.

Tucker, F. Herbert, Jr. Browning's Beginnings: The Art of Disclosure. Minneapolis: U. Minnesota Press, 1980.

Victorian Poetry and Poetics. Ed. Walter E. Houghton and G. Robert Stange. Boston: Riverside, 1959. Pp. 179-180

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Arnold's "Dover Beach" : A Commentary

Julia Touche

Comments on Form and Structure

"Dover Beach" [text] consists of four stanzas, each containing a variable number of verses. The first stanza has 14 lines, the second 6, the third 8 and the fourth 9. As for the metrical scheme, there is no apparent rhyme scheme, but rather a free handling of the basic iambic pattern. In stanza 3 there is a series of open vowels ("Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" (l. 25). A generally falling syntactical rhythm can be detected and continues into stanza 4. In this last stanza one can find seven lines of iambic pentameter (l.31-37), with the rhyme scheme of abbacddcc.

According to Ruth Pitman, this poem can be seen as "a series of incomplete sonnets" (quoted in Riede 196), and David G. Riede adds:

The first two sections each consist of 14 lines that suggest but do not achieve strict sonnet form, and except for a short (three foot) opening line, the last section emulates the octave of a sonnet, but closes with a single, climactic line instead of a sestet -- as though the final five lines had been eroded. (197)

The thoughts do not appear as obviously structured and organised as in "Calais Sands", which is accentuated by the fact that run-on lines are mixed with end-stopped lines. In the first stanza the rhythm of the poem imitates the "movement of the tide" (l.9-14). [Roy Thomas, How to read a Poem? (London: University of London Press Ltd, 1961) 102.[cited as: Thomas]]

Terms of Art "Dover Beach" is a melancholic poem. Matthew Arnold uses the means of 'pathetic fallacy', when he attributes or rather projects the human feeling of sadness onto an inanimate object like the sea. At the same time he creates a feeling of 'pathos'. The reader can feel sympathy for the suffering lyrical self, who suffers under the existing conditions.

The repetition of "is" in lines 1-4 is used to illustrate the nightly seaside scenery: The sea is calm tonight, The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; . . . [emphasis mine]

It leads up to an eventual climax with 'the light/ gleams and is gone' . The first two is portray what can be seen. The last 'is' emphasises that the light is not there, that it cannot be seen any longer, but is gone and leaves nothing but darkness behind. In a metaphorical sense of the word, not only the light is gone, but also certainty. The darkness makes it hard to define both one's own and somebody else's position, and one can never be certain that the light will ever return.

A repetition of neither...nor in stanza 4 underlines a series of denials: ". . . neither joy, nor love, nor light/ Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;" (l. 33-34) [emphasis mine]. All these are basic human values. If none of these do truly exist, this raises the question of what remains at all. With these lines, Arnold draws a very bleak and nihilistic view of the world he is living in.

As in "Calais Sands", he uses a lot of adjectives to enrich the poem's language, such as "tremulous cadence" (l.13) and "eternal note of sadness" (l.14). These help to increase the general melancholic feeling of the poem.

Exclamations are used at various points of the poem with quite opposite effects. In the first stanza, Arnold displays an outwardly beautiful nightly seaside scenery, when the lyrical self calls his love to the window ("Come . .. !" (l.6)) to share with him the serenity of the evening. First she is asked to pay attention to the visual, then to the aural impression ("Listen!" (l.9)).

In the fourth stanza, however, after he has related his general disillusionment with the world, he pledges for his love to be faithful ('true') to him. ("Ah, love, let us be true/To one another! . . ." (l. 29-30))

A simile in stanza 3 ("like the folds of a bright girdle furled," l. 13)) contrasts with "Vast edges drear/And naked shingles of the world." (l. 27-28). Peter Hühn calls this "Kleidervergleich" and explains:

Es tritt andeutungsweise noch ein weiteres Bild zur Meeresmetapher hinzu, der Kleidervergleich, der die Sinnentleerung als Prozess der Entblössung wiedergibt . . . Eine wichtige Implikation dieses Bildes ist die Vorstellung, dass der Sinn nicht den Dingen selbst innewohnt, sondern ihnen vom Menschen (seinem "Glauben") erst übergezogen wird." >[74]

Throughout the poem, the sea is used as an image and a metaphor. At first, it is beautiful to look at in the moonlight (ll.1-8), then it begins to make hostile sounds ("grating roar" (l. 9); "tremulous cadence" (l.13)) that evoke a general feeling of sadness. In the third stanza, the sea is turned into a metaphoric "Sea of Faith" (l.21) -- a symbol for a time when religion could still be experienced without the doubts brought about by progress and science (Darwinism). Now, the 'Sea of Faith' and thus the certainty of religion withdraws itself from the human grasp and leaves only darkness behind.

Theme and Subject

The first stanza opens with the description of a nightly scene at the seaside. The lyrical self calls his addressee to the window, to share the visual beauty of the scene. Then he calls her attention to the aural experience, which is somehow less beautiful. The lyrical self projects his own feelings of melancholy on to the sound of "the grating roar /Of pebbles, which the waves draw back, and fling/ At their return, up the high strand" (ll.9-11). This sound causes an emotion of "sadness" (l.14) in him.

The second stanza introduces the Greek author Sophocles' idea of "the turbid ebb and flow of human misery" (ll.17-18). A contrast is formed to the scenery of the previous stanza. Sophocles apparently heard the similar sound at the "Aegean" sea (l. 16) and thus developed his ideas. Arnold then reconnects this idea to the present. Although there is a distance in time and space ("Aegean" -- "northern sea" (L. 20)), the general feeling prevails.

In the third stanza, the sea is turned into the "Sea of Faith" (l.21), which is a metaphor for a time (probably the Middle Ages) when religion could still be experienced without the doubt that the modern (Victorian) age brought about through Darwinism, the Industrial revolution, Imperialism, a crisis in religion, etc.) Arnold illustrates this by using an image of clothes ('Kleidervergleich'). When religion was still intact, the world was dressed ("like the folds of a bright girdle furled" (l. 23)). Now that this faith is gone, the world lies there stripped naked and bleak. ("the vast edges drear/ And naked shingles of the world" (ll. 27-28))

The fourth and final stanza begins with a dramatic pledge by the lyrical self. He asks his love to be "true" (l.29), meaning faithful, to him. ("Ah, love, let us be true /To one another!" (ll. 29-30)). For the beautiful scenery that presents itself to them ("for the world, which seems/ To lie before us like a land of dreams,/ So various, so beautiful, so new" (ll.30-32)) is really not what it seems to be. On the contrary, as he accentuates with a series of denials, this world does not contain any basic human values. These have disappeared, along with the light and religion and left humanity in darkness. "We" (l.35) could just refer to the lyrical self and his love, but it could also be interpreted as the lyrical self addressing humanity. The pleasant scenery turns into a "darkling plain" (l. 35), where only hostile, frightening sounds of fighting armies can be heard:

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night." (ll.35-37)).

According to Ian Hamilton, this refers to a passage in Thukydides, The Battle of Epipolae, where -- in a night encounter -- the two sides could not distinguish friend from foe" (144-145).

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MATTHEW ARNOLD-BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) was an agnostic. He worked as a Schools Inspector for 35 years becoming Chief Inspector of Schools in England in 1884. He was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford University for ten years in 1857. His poetry was written mostly in the years 1847- 1857 after which he wrote many essays on the need to develop an understanding culture. He was a noted social critic.

The poem should be understood in the context of Arnold's personal life. Son of Dr Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of the famous Rugby School, he won an open scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. The family's summer home in the Lake District neighboured that of William Wordsworth, with whom they became friends.

Dover Beach was probably written in June 1851 following a visit to Dover en route to Europe with his new wife, Lucy Wightman. The poem was not published until 1867.

It is a poem of maturity reflecting his own felt need to commit himself and his life. Some of his earlier poems were inspired by a French girl, Marguerite, from whom he was to be separated for the rest of his life. These poems highlight his realization that love enhances loneliness, a sense of loss, and is a self-imposed prison.

"How vain a thing is human love"

The heart can bind itself alone
And faith may oft be unreturn'd
Self-swayed our feelings ebb and swell"

Only in a commitment to revere and develop the perfected qualities in Man can Man hope to evade the inherent insecurity of life and the transience of 'natural' feeling. This is a matter of will supported by feeling. Not an inflexible will, nor a single viewpoint, but the ability to be open to experience, react to it, absorb it and re-fashion it to move towards 'perfection'.

Less than commitment to this path, collapse into uncontrolled feeling and indulging of desire, leads to moral anarchy. Not in the sense that people are intrinsically evil but that they may lose the path to salvation.

Reading Arnold, you will come across contrasts between Poets, Puritans and Philistines. For Arnold, the Philistine was "the great middle part of the English nation" and his own class.

Some quotations from Matthew Arnold's prose

"the poetry of later paganism (Hellenic civilization, ed.) lived by the senses and understanding; the poetry of medieval Christianity lived by the heart and imagination. But the main element of the modern spirit's life is neither the senses and understanding, nor the heart and imagination; it is the imaginative reason."

From Pagan and Religious Medieval Sentiment, 1864

"Goethe puts the standard, once for all, inside every man instead of outside him."

From Heinrich Heine, 1863

"The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. It has one even yet greater! -- the passion for making them prevail. It is not satisfied till we all come to a perfect man."

From Culture and Anarchy, 1867-1868

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Byzantium in the Imagination of William Butler Yeats

James Haines

Byzantium plays a major role in two mature poems by Irish writer William Butler Yeats (1865–1939): “Sailing to Byzantium” (1926) and “Byzantium” (1930). Though Yeats never visited Istanbul, when travelling through Italy he did see Byzantine church mosaics in Ravenna and Sicily. It is probably from these experiences that the idea of using Byzantium as a symbolic contrast to the Ireland of his day (which he refers to as “no country for old men” in the earlier of the two poems) came to him.

Writing of “Sailing to Byzantium”, Yeats noted that ‘When Irishmen were illuminating the Book of Kells and making the jewelled croziers in the National Museum, Byzantium was the centre of European civilisation and the source of its spiritual philosophy, so I symbolise the search for the spiritual life by a journey to that city’. From Yeats’ letters and prose commentaries, we know that he viewed Byzantium as a sort of heavenly realm which, through its art and architecture, will last eternally. As Yeats himself puts it, Byzantium was a place where ‘religious, aesthetic and practical life were one’, a place where artists and craftsmen ‘spoke to the multitude and the few alike’, a place where he ‘could find in some little wine-shop some philosophical worker in mosaic who could answer all my questions, the supernatural descending nearer to him than to Plotinus even’.

Note: Plotinus was an Egyptian born, Roman writer and philosopher

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The Silent Listener in Browning's "My Last Duchess"

Glenn Everett, Associate Professor of English, University of Tennessee at Martin

How do we read "My Last Duchess," one of the most representative dramatic monologues? The old "sympathy/judgment" model does not seem to work very well. Langbaum, the main proponent of this view, finds that the Duke's

immense attractiveness . . . his conviction of match less superiority, his intelligence, and bland amoral ity, his poise, his taste for art, his manners, overwhelm the envoy, causing him apparently to suspend judgment of the duke, for he raises no demur. The reader is no less overwhelmed. We suspend moral judg ment because we prefer to participate in the duke's power and freedom, in his hard core of character fiercely loyal to itself. (83)

Hazard Adams points out that sympathy does not seem to be the right word for our relationship to the Duke (151-52), and Philip Drew protests that suspending our moral judgment should not req uire "an anaesthetizing of the moral sense for the duration of the poem" (28). Langbaum is right that the intellectual exercise of inferring the real character of the last Duchess from what the Duke says about her to the envoy and then going on to make a moral judgment about him constitutes a large part of our enjoy ment of the poem, but that enjoyment is not dependent upon our entering into sympathy with the Duke.

Rather, we enter into this scene on the side of the envoy, and at that level we feel the pull of the Duke's commanding rhe toric. In order to read the poem, we must create the scene in imagination, which means "losing ourselves" within it, forget ting, for the moment, our real, present surroundings in favor of active involvement in the dramatic situation. Our entry is facilitated by its most striking feature, which is the way the Duke so directly addresses us. His narrative in the center of the poem is carefully framed by the first ten lines and the last ten, in which he addresses someone as "you." Because we do not discover until after he has told his tale that this second person is in fact present in the poem, at the moment of our reading we can only assume that it is us to whom he is speaking. (It is true that we eventually discover that this "you" to whom he is speaking is an envoy from a Count, but this identification is not made until very late in the poem.) We are slightly disoriented, on a first reading, by that direct address, and we recognize that an effort is being made to suggest that we are the silent partner in a conversation; even the omission of quotation marks helps sustain the illusion that we have encountered a character who is speaking directly to us. Trusting that our curiosity about what is going on in the poem will keep us reading despite our lack of information about the character of the auditor, Browning leaves us only one source for that information, the Duke's monologue.

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MATERIALS ON “MUSEE DE BEAUX ARTS”

BY W.H.AUDEN

Legend of Icarus and Daedalus

painted by Carlo Saraceni

Now that you have read and thought about Auden's poem, you can gain a better understanding of both the poem and Breughel's painting by reading the Greek legend of Daedalus and Icarus.

Daedalus, renowned architect, designed the maze in which King Minos of Crete hid the Minotaur. This creature was half bull, half man, offspring of an affair between Pasiphae, Minos's wife, and a beautiful bull given as a gift by Poseidon for sacrifice. Because Minos did not obey and sacrifice the bull, Poseidon had Pasiphae fall in love with the creature. Minos then ordered Daedalus, architect and inventor, to design a labyrinth or maze from which nothing could escape. Athenians who came to conquer Crete were imprisoned in this labyrinth and were of course devoured by the monster. When Theseus came, however, Minos's daughter Ariadne fell in love with him. She told him to tie a piece of thread to the entry and unwind the ball as he moved through the maze. Theseus thus killed the monster and followed the thread back, took Ariadne, and escaped.

Minos determined that only Daedalus could have designed such an escape and therefore imprisoned the inventor and his son, Icarus, in the maze. Knowing that even he could not find his way out of this labyrinth, Daedalus created wings from bird feathers for the two of them to fly away, fastening them with wax and warning his son not to fly too close to the heat of the sun nor the dampness of the sea below but to follow his father closely.

Ovid reports that "Some fisher, perhaps, plying his quivering rod, some shepherd leaning on his staff, or a peasant bent over his plow handle caught sight of them as they flew past and stood stock still in astonishment, believing these creatures who could fly through the air must be gods" (Metamorphosis 8). Icarus, enjoying the freedom of flight, soared too close to the sun. When the wax melted, he plunged into the sea. After burying his son, Daedalus went to Sicily but was eventually found by Minos. What then? Neither Ovid nor Edith Hamilton (Mythology) says.

Allusion

An allusion is a brief, usually indirect reference to another work or to a real or historical event or person, traditionally as a way of drawing connections between those elements as well as enriching the meaning of the current work through associations with the other. Allusions imply a shared cultural experience or at least understanding. When you think and write about allusions, you should identify which elements of the second work, the work being alluded to, relate to the first work, the work you are reading. You should also think about how the characteristics of the second work enrich your understanding of the work you are reading.

For example, having read or heard the story of Hansel and Gretel helps readers understand Louise Gluck's poem "Gretel in Darkness." Having read Hamlet helps readers understand "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Having read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" helps readers understand the Crash Test Dummies song "Afternoons and Coffeespoons."

When you read Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts, the allusions to the Old Masters, to the legend of Icarus and Daedalus, and to Christian martyrdom guide you to expand your understanding of individual images as well as the poem's theme. Although you can understand most of Anne Sexton's poem To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph without knowing the Icarus legend or being familiar with Yeats's poem To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing, her poem is enriched by your making the connections with the allusions. William Carlos Williams's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is so closely tied to Brueghel's painting and the Icarus legend that knowledge of the allusions is essential to readers' understanding.

Musee des Beaux Arts

At Musee Royale des Beaux Arts, a fine arts museum in Brussels, Belgium, hangs Brueghel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.

Old Masters

The Old Masters were artists of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries whose works, masterpieces of the Renaissance, also are called old masters. Classical scenes of pagan Greece and Rome as well as religious scenes from Christ's life and early Christendom were frequently the subjects of their works. In Auden's Musee des Beaux Arts, what concepts are connected through classical and Christian allusions? How does the visual communication of the painters relate to the verbal communication of the poem? Note the pronoun "they" in "They never forgot"--a reference again to the Old Masters.

miraculous birth

What is the literal meaning of "miraculous birth" here? Look up the word miraculous in a good college dictionary or unabridged dictionary to give you a fuller understanding of the term. Consider this phrase in relation to the "dreadful martyrdom." Why would children not want the birth of Christ to happen? Why would old people be waiting for this same event?

dreadful martyrdom

What is the literal meaning of "dreadful martyrdom" here? Look up the word "martyrdom" in a good college dictionary or an unabridged dictionary to give you a fuller understanding of the term. How does the idea that "even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course" relate to the story of Icarus? What do these two events--one from Greek mythology and one from Christianity--have in common as they are presented in this poem?

Pieter Brueghel [Bruegel] the Elder (c. 1525-1569)

Brueghel was a Dutch artist noted for landscapes and scenes of the lives of ordinary people. Both The Fall of Icarus and The Dance inspired poems by William Carlos Williams. Two other Brueghel paintings also are alluded to in Auden's poem: The Numbering at Bethlehem and The Massacre of the Innocents.

the torturer's horse

What is the impact of the word "innocent" in relation to a horse belonging to a torturer? What else in the poem has a connection with the concept of innocence?

To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph by Anne Sexton

Consider the contrast between "success" and "failure."

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To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph (1962)
Anne Sexton (1928-1974)

Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wings on,
testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade,
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past
and think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well.
Larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast
of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!
Feel the fire at his neck and see how casually
he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling
into that hot eye. Who cares that he fell back to the sea?
See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down
while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by William Carlos Williams

The title of this poem is a direct allusion to Brueghel's painting. Like Auden's poem, this one is inspired by the painting and by the legend of Icarus to reflect on suffering and the way people react to the suffering of others--an almost literal retelling of the "event" in the painting. But look again at the arrangement of the words on the page, on the few carefully selected words.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (1962)
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

I believe that all this nonsense was nearly extempore, and that the fancy of drawing the images from America arose at the moment from the obvious rhyme which presented itself in the first stanza.

The following extracts are from letters addressed to a niece who was at that time amusing herself by attempting a novel, probably never finished, certainly never published, and of which I know nothing but what these extracts tell. They show the good-natured sympathy and encouragement which the aunt, then herself occupied in writing Emma, could give to the less matured powers of the niece. They bring out incidentally some of her opinions concerning compositions of that kind:

Chawton, Aug. 10, 1814
Your aunt C. does not like desultory novels, and is rather fearful that yours will be too much so; that there will be too frequent a change from one set of people to another, and that circumstances will be sometimes introduced, of apparent consequence, which will lead to nothing. It will not be so great an objection to me. I allow much more latitude than she does, and think nature and spirit cover many sins of a wandering story. And people in general do not care much about it, for your comfort...

Sept. 9
You are now collecting your people delightfully, getting them exactly into such a spot as is the delight of my life. Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on; and I hope you will write a great deal more, and make full use of them while they are so very favourably arranged.

Sept. 28
Devereux Forrester being ruined by his vanity is very good: but I wish you would not let him plunge into a 'vortex of dissipation'. I do not object to the thing, but I cannot bear the expression: it is such thorough novel slang; and so old that I dare say Adam met with it in the first novel that he opened.

Hans Place (Nov. 1814)
I have been very far from finding your book an evil, I assure you. I read it immediately, and with great pleasure. Indeed, I do think you get on very fast. I wish other people of my acquaintance could compose as rapidly. Julian's history was quite a surprise to me. You had not very long known it yourself, I suspect; but I have no objection to make to the circumstance; it is very well told, and his having been in love with the aunt gives Cecilia an additional interest with him. I like the idea; a very proper compliment to an aunt! I rather imagine, indeed, that nieces are seldom chosen but in compliment to some aunt or other. I dare say your husband was in love with me once, and would never have thought of you if he had not supposed me dead of a scarlet fever.

Jane Austen was successful in everything that she attempted with her fingers. None of us could throw spilikins in so perfect a circle, or take them off with so steady a hand. Her performances with cup and ball were marvellous. The one used at Chawton was an easy one, and she has been known to Catch it on the point above an hundred times in succession, till her hand was weary. She sometimes found a resource in that simple game, when unable, from weakness in her eyes, to read or write long together. Happy would the compositors for the press be if they had always so legible a manuscript to work from. But the writing was not the only part of her letters which showed superior handiwork. In those days there was an art in folding and sealing. No adhesive envelopes made all easy. Some people's letters always looked loose and untidy; but her paper was sure to take the right folds, and her sealing- wax to drop into the right place. Her needlework both plain and ornamental was excellent, and might almost have put a sewing machine to shame. She was considered especially great in satin stitch. She spent much time in these occupations, and some of her merriest talk was over clothes which she and her companions were making, sometimes for themselves, and sometimes for the poor. There still remains a curious specimen of her needlework made for a sister-in-law, my mother. In a very small bag is deposited a little rolled up housewife, furnished with minikin needles and fine thread. In the housewife is a tiny pocket, and in the pocket is enclosed a slip of paper, on which, written as with a crow quill, are these lines:

This little bag, I hope, will prove
To be not vainly made;
For should you thread and needles want,
It will afford you aid.

And, as we are about to part,
'T will serve another end:
For, when you look upon this bag,
You'll recollect your friend.

It is the kind of article that some benevolent fairy might be supposed to give as a reward to a diligent little girl. The whole is of flowered silk, and having been never used and carefully preserved, it is as fresh and bright as when it was first made seventy years ago; and shows that the same hand which painted so exquisitely with the pen could work as delicately with the needle.

I have collected some of the bright qualities which shone, as it were, on the surface of Jane Austen's character, and attracted most notice; but underneath them there lay the strong foundations of sound sense and judgment, rectitude of principle, and delicacy of feeling, qualifying her equally to advise, assist, or amuse. She was, in fact, as ready to comfort the unhappy, or to nurse the sick, as she was to laugh and jest with the light-hearted. Two of her nieces were grown up, and one of them was married, before she was taken away from them. As their minds became more matured, they were admitted into closer intimacy with her, and learned more of her graver thoughts; they know what a sympathising friend and judicious adviser they found her to be in many little difficulties and doubts of early womanhood.

I do not venture to speak of her religious principles: that is a subject on which she herself was more inclined to think and act than to talk, and I shall imitate her reserve; satisfied to have shown how much of Christian love and humility abounded in her heart, without presuming to lay bare the roots whence those graces grew. Some little insight, however, into these deeper recesses of the heart must be given, when we come to speak of her death.

This presentation of A Memoir of Jane Austen by her nephew is Copyright 2001 by P.J. LaBrocca. It may not be copied, duplicated, stored or transmitted in any form without written permission. The text is in the public domain.

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Criticisms and Interpretations
V. By Goldwin Smith

AS we should expect from such a life, Jane Austen’s view of the world is genial, kindly, and, we repeat, free from anything like cynicism. It is that of a clear-sighted and somewhat satirical onlooker, loving what deserves love, and amusing herself with the foibles, the self-deceptions, the affectations of humanity. Refined almost to fastidiousness, she is hard upon vulgarity; not, however, on good-natured vulgarity, such as that of Mrs. Jennings in Sense and Sensibility, but on vulgarity like that of Miss Steele, in the same novel, combined at once with effrontery and with meanness of soul….

To sentimentality Jane Austen was a foe. Antipathy to it runs through her works. She had encountered it in the romances of the day, such as the works of Mrs. Radcliffe and in people who had fed on them. What she would have said if she had encountered it in the form of Rousseauism we can only guess. The solid foundation of her own character was good sense, and her type of excellence as displayed in her heroines is a woman full of feeling, but with her feelings thoroughly under control. Genuine sensibility, however, even when too little under control, she can regard as lovable. Marianne in Sense and Sensibility is an object of sympathy, because her emotions, though they are ungoverned and lead her into folly, are genuine, and are matched in intensity by her sisterly affection. But affected sentiment gets no quarter….

Jane Austen held the mirror up to her time, or at least to a certain class of the people of her time; and her time was two generations and more before ours. We are reminded of this as we read her works by a number of little touches of manners and customs belonging to the early part of the century, and anterior to the rush of discovery and development which the century has brought with it. There are no railroads, and no lucifer matches. It takes you two days and a half, even when you are flying on the wings of love or remorse, to get from Somersetshire to London. A young lady who has snuffed her candle out has to go to bed in the dark. The watchman calls the hours of the night. Magnates go about in chariots and four with outriders, their coachmen wearing wigs. People dine at five, and instead of spending the evening in brilliant conversation as we do they spend it in an unintellectual rubber of whist, or a round game. Life is unelectric, untelegraphic; it is spent more quietly and it is spent at home. If you are capable of enjoying tranquillity, at least by way of occasional contrast to the stir and stress of the present age, you will find in these tales the tranquillity of a rural neighborhood and a little country town in England a century ago….

The life which Jane Austen painted retains its leading features, and is recognized by the reader at the present day with little effort of the imagination. It is a life of opulent quiet

Criticisms and Interpretations
VI. By F. W. Cornish

JANE AUSTEN needs no testimonials; her position is at this moment established on a firmer basis than that of any of her contemporaries. She has completely distanced Miss Edgeworth, Miss Ferrier, Fanny Burney, and Hannah More, writers who eclipsed her modest reputation in her own day. The readers of “Evelina,” “Ormond,” “Marriage,” or “Caelebs” are few; but hundreds know intimately every character and every scene in Pride and Prejudice. She has survived Trollope and Mrs. Gaskell: one may almost say that she is less out of date than Currer Bell and George Eliot. It was not always so. In 1859 a writer in “Blackwood’s Magazine” spoke of her as “being still unfamiliar in men’s mouths” and “not even now a household word.”

It is easier to feel than to estimate a genius which has no parallel. Jane Austen’s faults are obvious. She has no remarkable distinction of style. Her plots, though worked out with microscopic delicacy, are neither original nor striking; incident is almost absent; she repeats situations, and to some extent even characters. She cared for story and situation only as they threw light on character. She has little idealism, little romance, tenderness. Poetry, or religion. All this may be conceded, and yet she stands by the side of Moliere, unsurpassed among writers of prose and poetry, within the limits which she imposed on herself, for clear and sympathetic vision of human character.

The reason for this comparative obscurity in her own time, compared with her fame at the present day, may in some measure be that in writing, as in other arts, finish is now more highly prized than formerly. But conception as well as finish is in it. The miracle in Jane Austen’s writing is not only that her presentment of each character is complete and consistent, but also that every fact and particular situation is viewed in comprehensive proportion and relation to the rest. Some facts and expressions which pass almost unnoticed by the reader, and quite unnoticed by the other actors in the story, turn up later to take their proper place. She never drops a stitch. The reason is not so much that she took infinite trouble, though no doubt she did, as that everything was actual to her, as in his larger historical manner everything was actual to Macaulay.

She sees everything in clear outline and perspective. She does not care to analyze by logic what she knows by intuition; she does not search out the grounds of motive like George Eliot, nor illumine them like Meredith by search-light flashes of insight, nor like Hardy display them by irony sardonic or pitying, nor like Henry James thread a labyrinth of indications and intimations, repulsions and attractions right and left, all pointing to the central temple, where sits the problem. She has no need to construct her characters, for there they are before her, like Mozart’s music, only waiting to be written down.—From “Jane Austen” in “English Men of Letters.”

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What Critics Have Said About Hedda Gabler

MICHAEL MEYER

"Hedda…is a supreme creation. Ibsen the portrait artist is both analytical and compassionate, mercilessly objective and yet by no means exultant over his subject's shortcomings. Combined with vivid portraits of the pendant Tesman, the daemonic Lovborg, and complete woman Mrs. Elvstead, Hedda Gabler is a masterful character drama. Ibsen wrote much more that was ambitious but nothing greater."

John Gassner
Masters of the Drama 1954

"[Hedda's] pleasure…comes not from the act of destruction as destruction—which could perhaps have some kind of perverse, barbarous nobility—but from the infinitely more mean-spirited act of taking from others, of spoiling someone else's creation. [T]he final irony of the play is that those who live by and for the ideal of self-sacrifice are just those who survive, whereas Hedda, in her compulsion to destroy other people, ends by sacrificing herself. Only thus can the ideal become one with reality."

Robin Young
Time's Disinherited Children 1989

"Hedda Gabler has no ethical ideals at all, only romantic ones. She is a typical nineteenth-century figure, falling into the abyss between the ideals which do not impose on her and the realities she has not yet discovered."

George Bernard Shaw
The Quintessence of Ibsenism 1891

"The biological principles of heredity, the tenants of psychology, and the cultural matrices of conventional morality, and the laws of economics combine in Ibsen's plays to form patterns of fate and nemesis that assume the functions filled by the supernatural in classic tragedy."

Charles R. Lyons
Hedda Gabler: Gender, Role, and World 1991

"Ibsen's plays of the 1890's, beginning with Hedda Gabler are often best resolved when read as studies of interlocking and interpersonal relationships. Increasingly his preoccupations were less with public abuses than with private dilemma and anguish, more with what was individual and personal than with what was typical and representative; and with this went a compulsive curiosity about the nature of the tensions, the manifold attractions and repulsions, that hold a shifting and essentially dynamic situation together in moment-to-moment equilibrium: temperamental and sexual incompatibility; personal magnetism and hypnotic force: the undertow of the unconscious mind; the persuasive force of dreams and visions…Hedda Gabler, is the product of a mind deeply preoccupied with the nature of power, particularly the power of one mind to influence and impose itself upon another."

James McFarlane
Introduction to Hedda Gabler , 1981

" …if we examine Hedda Gabler closely we find that it contains one of the most revealing self-portraits he [Ibsen] ever painted. The play might, indeed, be subtitled Portrait of the Dramatist as a Young Woman…But if Hedda Gabler is in fact a self-portrait, it is certainly an unconscious one—not that that makes it any less truthful or valuable; rather the reverse. Ibsen's rough preliminary jottings…make it clear that he intended the play as a tragedy of the purposelessness of life, and in particular of the purposelessness imposed on women of his time both by their upbringing and by the social conventions which limited their activities."

Michael Meyer
Introduction to Hedda Gabler , 1961

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HEDDA GABLER-GENERAL INFORMATION

Henrik Ibsen's plays anticipate major developments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

the individual's feelings of alienation and actual alienation from society,
the pressures by which society insures conformity to its values and suppresses individuality,
the barriers which modern life sets up against living heroically.

Ibsen exposed other stresses of modern life by showing the inner pressures and conflicts that inhibit and even destroy the individual. Some of these pressures stem from conditioning, i.e., from the individual's internalizing society's values. John Northam distinguishes the opposing elements within the individual as the social self and the essential self. The social self is the persona which conforms to the demands of family, friends, community, and society and which an individual generally develops for acceptance or as a protection. The essential self is an individual's true Self and expresses the individual's thoughts, feelings, desires, needs, etc. This distinction, which is a useful concept in general, has particular relevance to Hedda Gabler; I will refer to it repeatedly in our discussions of the play.

A primary value for Ibsen is freedom, which he believed to be essential for self-fulfillment. Of the "many things" which his later writings, including Hedda Gabler, were concerned with, Ibsen specifically identified "contradictions between ability and desire, or between will and circumstance, the mingled tragedy and comedy of humanity and the individual."

Ibsen was constantly experimenting and pushing boundaries in his writing. This habit of exploration often made him and his plays controversial and shocked conservative critics and audiences. Of this habit, he said, "Where I stood then, when I wrote my various books, there is now a fairly compact crowd, but I myself am no longer there; I am somewhere else, I hope in front." His constant changing often confused contemporary theater-goers and critics, who had to keep adjusting their expectations of an Ibsen play. His repeated changes and experimenting also make it difficult to place Ibsen and his plays in neat categories. Adding to the difficulty of classifying him is the complexity with which he presents his heroes and themes. The resulting ambiguity has enabled readers to find support for their own beliefs and to claim him as a member of their movements. This is true today, as it was in the nineteenth century. Over the years, Ibsen has been called a revolutionary, a nationalist, a romantic, a poet, an idealist, a realist, a socialist, a naturalist, a symbolist, a feminist, and a forerunner of psychoanalysis.

Ibsen had a profound effect on the drama both of his own time and in the twentieth century. His plays stimulated the avant-garde theater in Germany and France, and only the plays of George Bernard Shaw had a greater impact in England. The demands of his plays caused directors to find new ways of staging plays and actors to develop new ways of acting. The declamatory style of acting in vogue during Ibsen's day could not, for example, convincingly present the natural dialogue of Ibsen's later plays, with its sentence fragments, exclamations, and short statements. (Such dialogue is commonplace in plays, movies, and TV dramas today, and we take it for granted; however, in Ibsen's day it was an innovation which confused and upset theater-goers.) In fact, Hedda Gabler failed when introduced in Germany largely because the actress played Hedda in the traditional declamatory manner, which did not fit Ibsen's natural dialogue.

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Ibsen's Contemporaries Respond to Hedda Gabler

Many critics, whether European, British, or American, were horrified by Hedda Gabler. One appalled response was to deny that such a woman could exist in real life. A Norwegian critic called her a "monster created by the author in the form of a woman who has no counterpart in the real world." Another response was to classify Hedda as abnormal or perverted. The Danish critic George Brandes found her "a true type of degeneration" incapable "of yielding herself, body and soul, to the man she loves." For Hjalmer Boyeson she was "a complete perversion of womanhood." Others explained her as an example of the New Woman, a female character common in fiction in the 1890s, when women were actively demanding equality with men.

The play aroused negative criticism for yet another reason; it violated the assumptions of traditional literary theory. A good example of this kind of response is an anonymous review which appeared in the Saturday Review:

The production of an Ibsen play impels the inquiry, What is the province of art? If it be to elevate and refine, as we have hitherto humbly supposed, most certainly it cannot be said that the works of Ibsen have the faintest claim to be artistic. We see no ground on which his method is defensible. . . . Things rank and gross in nature alone have place in the mean and sordid philosophy of Ibsen. Those of his characters who are not mean morally are mean intellectually--the wretched George Tesman, with his enthusiasm about the old shoes his careful aunt brings him wrapped up in a bit of newspaper, is a case in point. As for refining and elevating, can any human being, it may be asked, feel happier or better in anyway from a contemplation of the two harlots at heart who do duty in Hedda Gabler? . . . We do not mean to say that there are not, unhappily, Hedda Gablers and George Tesmans in 'real life'. There are; but when we meet them we take the greatest pains to get out of their way, and why should they be endured on the stage?

Even some supporters of Ibsen were confused by this play, because they expected another problem play; a number of his previous plays had dealt with contemporary social issues like syphilis or political corruption. For them, Hedda Gabler might be brilliant but it was also pointless. Edmund Gosse could not find "any sort of general idea from Hedda Gabler...or satire on any condition of society."

The play also found many admirers. Justin McCarthy gave the play high praise, "Hedda Gabler is the name, to my mind, of Ibsen's greatest play, and of the most interesting woman that Ibsen has created." The anonymous reviewer for the London Sunday Times recommended the play without reservation: "one of the most notable events in the history of the modern stage, for, in spite of all prejudice and opposition, it marks an epoch and launches an influence." The Times reviewer based his judgements on a more liberal literary theory than the reviewer for the Saturday Review quoted above:

Now, to us Hedda Gabler appears a wonderful work of art, one that must produce a profound impression upon those who will accustom themselves to regard a stage-play from the point of view of real, living character in actual contact with the facts and sensations and possibilities of human experience, instead of gauging it by the conventional standard of playmaking, or the superficial observation of ordinary social intercourse. Ibsen has a way of going to the root of the matter, and exposing the skeleton in the cupboard, which is certainly not always a pleasant sight. But life, with its infinite subtleties and inconsistencies, is always interesting, and Ibsen shows the wonder and the pity of it, while perhaps he only infers its loveliness by contrast. But therein he proves himself a master artist, for his point of view is definite, and the impression he produces is complete and final. In Hedda Gabler he gives us a typical tragedy of modern life, and in the strange, sensitive, selfish heroine, he presents one of the most wonderful and subtle conceptions of woman in the whole range of dramatic literature.

Regardless of the mixed reviews, British and American audiences flocked to see Hedda Gabler and made it a financial success. They enjoyed its dramatic surprises and shocks. The play was (and still is) popular with actresses, because it provides "juicy parts" for them, as do most of Ibsen's plays.

Continuing into the Twentieth Century

Many of the assessments of Hedda Gabler of the 1890s and the early 1900s continue to be expressed today. For F.L.Lucas, Hedda is a twentieth century New Woman, "the idle, emancipated woman--and what she is to do with her emancipation, the devil only knows" (1962). For James Huneker, she is the deficient woman, "the loveless woman." The schism between those who want art to be elevating or at least happy and those who accept grim portrayals of reality continues. Of course, new ways of reading the play have arisen in the interval; for example, Freudian critics interpret Hedda as sexually repressed or frigid, and Marxist critics focus on the repression of bourgeois society, which is represented by the Tesmans.

Hedda Gabler: An Introduction

Ibsen said about Hedda Gabler, "...it was not my desire to deal in this play with so-called problems. What I principally wanted to do was to depict human beings, human emotions, and human destinies, upon a groundwork of certain of the social conditions and principles of the present day." His statement raises a number of questions for audiences and for readers of Hedda Gabler.

What kinds of people are being depicted? and why?
What emotions does the play focus on? and why?
What destiny unfolds? What factors cause that destiny (e.g., the individual's psychological make-up, society's pressures, the impact of others, of religion, of marriage, or of social class)? Is that destiny inevitable?
What social conditions and principles are at work? What is their impact?

To answer these questions, we will look closely at the play. We will not necessarily answer the questions in the order listed, nor will our discussion always be phrased in Ibsen's terms, but we will arrive at answers. But we may not arrive at one answer or one interpretation that every class member, including me, agrees with. This is a highly complex play: Hedda Gabler's behavior is contradictory; the characters are not easily judged because they have positive and negative traits; the issues raised are numerous and complicated; finally, the structure of the play does not reveal Ibsen's point of view. What I mean by the play's not revealing Ibsen's point of view can be explained by referring to Hamlet. Hamlet is unquestionably an honorable man with upstanding qualities whom the audience is expected to admire. It is not so clear how we are to view Hedda: is Hedda to be condemned for her selfishness and destructiveness? is she to be admired for her courage and determination? is she both admirable and despicable?

The Characterization of Hedda Gabler

The question most commonly asked about this play is, why does Hedda behave as she does? This question assumes that Ibsen has given her adequate motivation. Not everyone accepts this assumption; for Elizabeth Hardwick, "Hedda Gabler is unusual, I believe, in having no motivation whatsoever." If Hedda's behavior is unmotivated or insufficiently motivated, then she would seem to be an adult Bad Seed. If you agree with Hardwick's interpretation of Hedda, you might decide that Hedda's lack of motivation is such a serious flaw that the play, which revolves around her, is a failure.

Most audiences and readers, though, see Hedda as propelled by an internal conflict, though they may disagree about the nature of the conflict. Is Hedda torn between her social self and her essential self? Is her conflict an unspoken rebellion against the restrictions her society placed on women? Or is she a victim of her class and of her upbringing as General Gabler's daughter?

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Hedda Gabler as Tragedy

Another major issue which Hedda Gabler raises is whether it is a tragedy. We will not pursue this issue in class; however, you may wish to explore this topic on your own, and the following selections should prove helpful:

Kinds of tragedy. Greek tragedy, medieval tragedy and the wheel of fortune, Elizabethan and Shakespearean tagedy, and the problem play or play of ideas.
The tragic vision. The seven elements traditionally regarded as elements of tragedy: (1) a catastrophic conclusion, (2) that will seem inevitable, and (3) that occurs, ultimately, because of the human limitations of the protagonist, (4) who suffers terribly, and (5) whose suffering often seems disproportionate to his or her culpability. Yet (6) the suffering is usually redemptive, bringing out the noblest of human capacities for learning, and (7) for accepting moral responsibility.
Two Modern Views The critics Lou Salome and Caroline W. Mayerson answer the questions, "Is Hedda Gabler's death tragic?" and "Is Hedda Gabler a tragedy?"

Is Hedda Gabler a Tragedy?

Lou Salome believes Hedda Gabler's death is tragic and that Hedda Gabler is a tragedy. Carolyn W. Mayerson doesn't. What do you think of their interpretations? Do you think this play is a tragedy?

Lou Salome:

For it is an act of self renunciation, in a dark and ironic sense, through which Hedda rings down her life; she does not die for another person. . . and she does not live for another person. . . she dies for herself as she had lived for herself. In that she dies, she proves herself to be among those free born, untamed creatures; for in the necessity of her death, there first is revealed the whole tragedy of the uncanny contradiction of Hedda Gabler: the tragic aspect is that Hedda may only prove to herself the true existence of her inner freedom by cancelling herself out. She extinguishes the life of the tame and false Hedda, caught in the meshes of her own weakness, who while still living would not have found bearable the verdict now intoned by Counselor Brack over the deceased: "People don't do such things!"

Caroline W. Mayerson:

Hedda is incapable of making the distinction between an exhibitionistic gesture which inflates the ego, and the tragic death, in which the ego is sublimated in order that the values of life may be extended and reborn. Her inability to perceive the difference between melodrama and tragedy accounts for the disparity between Hedda's presumptive view of her own suicide and our evaluation of its significance. Ibsen with diabolical irony arranged a situation which bears close superficial resemblance to the traditional tragic end. Symbolically withdrawing herself from the bourgeois environment into the inner chamber which contains the reliques of her earlier life, Hedda plays a "wild dance" upon her piano and, beneath her father's portrait, shoots herself "beautifully" through the temple with her father's pistol. She dies to vindicate her heritage of independence. . . And we, having the opportunity to judge the act with relation to its full context, may properly interpret it as the final self-dramatization of the consistently sterile protagonist. Hedda gains no insight; her death affirms nothing of importance. She never understands why, at her touch, everything becomes "ludicrous and mean." She dies to escape a sordid situation that is largely of her own making; she will not face reality nor assume responsibility for the consequences of her acts. The pistols, having descended to a coward and a cheat, bring only death without honor.

The New Woman

The New Woman was the term used at the end of the nineteenth century to describe women who were pushing against the limits which society imposed on women. Today she might be called a liberated woman or feminist. Gail Finney gives a concise description of her:

The New Woman typically values self-fulfillment and independence rather than the stereotypically feminine ideal of self-sacrifice; believes in legal and sexual equality; often remains single because of the difficulty of combining such equality with marriage; is more open about her sexuality than the 'Old Woman'; is well-educated and reads a great deal; has a job; is athletic or otherwise physically vigorous and, accordingly, prefers comfortable clothes (sometimes male attire) to traditional female garb.

Ibsen supported greater freedom for women and expressed his belief in his plays. In his notes for A Doll's House, he asserted, "A woman cannot be herself in contemporary society, it is an exclusively male society with laws drafted by men, and with counsel and judges who judge feminine conduct from the male point of view." Ibsen's contemporaries associated him with the New Woman and women's rights. In 1898, the Norwegian Women's Rights League gave a banquet to honor him for his support of women's rights. How identified he was with this issue is suggested by Max Beerbohm's exaggerated, if witty statement, "The New Woman sprang fully armed from Ibsen's brain."

The Other

The Other is an individual who is perceived by the group as not belonging, as being different in some fundamental way. Any stranger becomes the Other. The group sees itself as the norm and judges those who do not meet that norm (that is, who are different in any way) as the Other. Perceived as lacking essential characteristics possessed by the group, the Other is almost always seen as a lesser or inferior being and is treated accordingly. The Other in a society may have few or no legal rights, may be characterized as less intelligent or as immoral, and may even be regarded as sub-human.

Otherness takes many forms. The Other may be someone who is of...

a different race (White vs. non-White),
a different nationality (Anglo Saxon vs. Italian),
a different religion (Protestant vs. Catholic or Christian vs. Jew),
a different social class (aristocrat vs. serf),
a different political ideology (capitalism vs. communism),
a different sexual orientation (heterosexual vs. homosexual),
a different origin (native born vs. immigrant).

The Other is not necessarily a numerical minority. In a country defeated by an imperial power, the far more numerous natives become the Other, for example, the British rule in India where Indians outnumbered the British 4,000 to 1. Similarly, women are defined and judged by men, the dominant group, in relationship to themselves, so that they become the Other. Hence Aristotle says: "The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities; we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness."

The group which is defining the Other may be an entire society, a social class or a community within a society, a family, or even a high school clique or a neighborhood gang.

The Other and the Outsider

The outsider frequently overlaps with the Other, but they are not identical. The outsider has the possibility of being accepted by and incorporated into the group; offspring are very likely to be accepted into the group. The Other, however, is perceived as different in kind, as lacking in some essential trait or traits that the group has; offspring will inherit the same deficient nature and be the Other also. Therefore the Other and the offspring of the Other may be doomed forever to remain separate, never to become part of the group--in other words, to be the Other forever.

The Other in Literature

The Other is a common figure in literature. If you took Core Studies 1, you may recognize the concept in a tragedy like Medea. Medea as Other is doubly dangerous. For the Greeks, any non-Greek was the Other or a "barbarian," and Medea is a barbarian. She is also the Other in being female; woman, as Other, is often perceived as inherently dangerous. Medea justifies these views of the Other in the terrible vengeance she wreaks on Jason because he betrayed her and abandoned her and their sons.

Do you see any relevance of this concept of the Other to the works we are reading in this course?

Is Hedda Gabler the Other in any way--as a woman with unacceptable aspirations or passions for her time and class?
Is Jane Eyre the Other in any way--in social class, in her values and goals, or in her nature? Consider her in the Reed household, at the Lowood School, in her position as governess, in her relationship with Rochester or with Blanche Ingram. If she is the Other, does she remain the Other or is she able to overcome her separate or inferior status and find acceptance?
There is no question that the Blacks in The Bluest Eye are presented as the Other in society and that they perceive themselves as Other. In what ways is their Otherness manifested? How are the children taught to be the Other? What consequences do the blacks in this novel suffer because they are the Other?
Similarly the Chinese mothers in The Joy Luck Club are presented as the Other in American society; are any of them the Other in Chinese society? Otherness also functions in the family relationships. The Chinese mothers perceive themselves as Other from their daughters, and their American-born daughters perceive themselves as Other from their mothers. In what ways is their Otherness manifested? How are the children taught to be the Other? How do the mothers become the Other to their children? What consequences do the mothers and daughters suffer because they are the Other?

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HEDDA GABLER, PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE SPACE OF (THE) PLAY

by Nigel Hand

PLOT AND MOTIFS OF THE PLAY

The established reading of Ibsen's play focusses very much on its central character, who is seen in some qualified sense at least, as an existential, or romantic, or tragic heroine. Hedda Gabler, it seems, presents us with a particular version of 'liberal tragedy', that form in which the claims of an alienated individual are uncompromisingly asserted against those of a conventional society (Williams, 1966 and 1971). At the age of twenty nine, and having 'danced herself out', the aristocratic Hedda Gabler has married Jørgen Tesman, an indefatigable scholar and pedant. If Tesman's world seemed to offer her some sort of security, in the event she feels that she is suffocating in its claustrophobically middle class atmosphere. The action of the play is presided over by the portrait of Hedda's father, General Gabler, which now hangs in the Tesmans' drawing room. This portrait of Hedda's dead father serves as the symbol of a moribund military-aristocratic world which no longer offers his daughter a home. Of her mother we hear no mention at all, and Hedda's only other remaining connection with the world she comes from is the pair of pistols which she has inherited from her father. Her disconcerting habit of firing off these pistols, from time to time, dramatises the profound dissonance between herself and her present world, and her frustration with the emptiness of her life. It seems she can conceive of no future for herself other than a life of excruciating boredom. During the opening scenes of the play various hints are thrown out to suggest that Hedda is pregnant, but the prospect of motherhood is so far from providing her with a reason for living that it seems to be anathema to her. Certainly the child would be born into an unpromising environment, for throughout the play we have the utmost difficulty in thinking of Hedda and Tesman as a parental couple. Tesman's naïve assumption that they have everything in common is matched by Hedda's inward belief that they have nothing. I shall suggest in my later discussion that the struggle to constitute the parental couple is one of the play's deep preoccupations.

If Hedda's character has been formed in a military-paternal setting, Tesman still lives in an atmosphere of motherly concern, brought up as he has been by a trio of adoring and self-sacrificing women - his two Aunts, Julle and Rina, and Berte, the maid. During the opening sequence of the action, with the Tesmans newly returned from a six month honeymoon trip in Europe, we are given an early indication of Hedda's hostility to the world in which she finds herself when, on an impulse, she speaks slightingly of a hat which she knows to be Aunt Julle's, but which she pretends to believe is 'the maid's'. That she knew the hat to be Aunt Julle's is revealed to us through a subsequent passage of dialogue between Hedda and Judge Brack. The latter is a friend of the family with whom she shares a habit of risqué conversation; he is as cold-bloodedly cynical as Tesman is naïve and good-natured, and his one purpose throughout the play is to engineer an affair with Hedda.

Meanwhile much greater scope for the central character to act upon her world opens up before her with the arrival on the scene of Thea Elvsted, a younger colleague of Hedda's during her schooldays. A good deal of our sense of the play's direction is produced by the interplay between these two female characters. It can hardly be said, however, that the initial comparison suggests that Hedda is the more independent or romantic of the two women. Hedda has married Tesman apparently for no better reason than that 'he insisted with might and main on being allowed to support me' (HG, p.300). Thea, on the other hand, has just walked out of her own marriage of convenience on account of what now seems to her a higher vocation, for she has become dedicated to the role of companion and support to Ejlert Løvborg, a gifted but unstable writer, who might at any moment, it seems, return to his former drunken habits, but for Thea's loyal ministrations.

Complications unfold when we learn that Hedda herself has had an earlier relationship with Løvborg, which broke up when she threatened to shoot him. It seems that she did so because, for her, Løvborg had in some undisclosed fashion begun to ask too much of the relationship. Since that time Løvborg's life has taken another turn, for under the tutelage of Thea Elvsted he has has written two books - the first, a general history of society, has been a succès d'estime; the second, a meditation on the future, exists only in manuscript but promises to make a considerable stir when it is published. Hedda's complex feelings about the relationship between Thea and Løvborg fuel the action of the play. To what extent her apparent belief that Løvborg should be liberated from the constraints of his relationship with Thea is a rationalisation of her jealousy it is not easy to discern, but at any rate she so works upon him that he goes to a bachelor party given by Brack and gets drunk once again. The consequence is that he loses the manuscript, which by this time has acquired an intense emotional value for all concerned - they have come to think of it, in fact, as a child. When the manuscript comes into Hedda's possession, via Tesman (who found it by the roadside), she burns it; and when the distraught Løvborg (who knows only that he has lost the 'child') returns to her house, she encourages his thoughts of suicide - and puts into his hands one of her father's pistols. Løvborg makes his way back to the rooms of 'Mademoiselle Diana', where he believes the manuscript was stolen from him, and in an unruly scene (reported to Hedda by Judge Brack) the pistol goes off and Løvborg is killed. Brack attempts to use these circumstances to play upon Hedda's fear of scandal and so to blackmail her into a liaison. But in the dénouement, while Thea and Tesman are beginning to try to reconstruct Løvborg's manuscript from the notes which Thea kept, Hedda shoots herself. It is left to the dismayed Brack to pronounce the final speech: 'One doesn't do that kind of thing.' (HG, p.364)

IMAGINING THE CHILD

As I have indicated I think that Robin Young is correct when he argues that much of the published commentary on Ibsen's plays gives an over romantic view of his work. In the case of Hedda Gabler even John Northam (1973), perhaps the most reliable of Ibsen critics (in English at any rate) seems to me to give a hugely distorted account of the play. Like other commentators Northam is preoccupied with the character of the protagonist, her supposed revolt against 'middle class society', the authenticity or otherwise of her final action, and hence the validity of her claims to heroic status. Though these issues routinely provide the agenda for most discussion of the play, I shall argue that they are only very partially what Hedda Gabler is about. The protagonist of Ibsen's play is for all of us a deeply troubling dramatic creation - outside of Shakespeare and the Greeks, none more so perhaps. Northam attempts to escape from the challenging perplexity which Hedda Gabler arouses in our minds by producing a highly romanticised appraisal of her character and actions. When he attributes to Ibsen's heroine 'a residually creative sense of human potentiality' (p.182) Northam undoubtedly points to something which is at the heart of the play, but his belief that she also displays 'serene self-confidence' (p.168) is simply astonishing, for what is Hedda Gabler if not a deeply troubled soul?

In producing his idealized portrait of Ibsen's central character Northam is responding, albeit wrong-headedly, I believe, to the central dynamic of Ibsen's play. It seems to me that as we watch Hedda Gabler we feel that the cast of characters as a whole faces the responsibility of nurturing the germ of life doubly symbolised by Løvborg's book and Hedda's unborn child. As the play goes forward it evokes in us a profound concern and apprehension for the future of this 'child'. The play works upon us with such gravity and depth of feeling because from first to last we fear that the human group before us is mortally near to failure in the 'holding' and nurturance of its 'offspring'. Critical misreading of the play derives from the obscuring of this very troubling question of the fate of the 'child' - and the corresponding flight into an attempt to redeem Hedda Gabler so that, however desperately, she may be seen not as a destroyer but as the carrier of the life-principle in the play. These processes of repression and distortion are at work in Northam's paragraphs on the burning of the book. In describing this event Northam more or less veils from sight the eerily dreadful spectacle of the mother-to-be burning a 'child': 'Now I'm burning your child, Thea - you and your curly hair! Your child and Ejlert Løvborg's. Now I'm burning - now I'm burning your child.' (HG, p.345) The fearful ambiguity of that last sentence ('I am burning...') reveals that the annihilating hatred which is dramatised in this scene is directed as much against the self as against the object. To refer to this moment as a 'tremendous fulfilment', as Northam does (p.169), serves not only to obscure the horror of it, but to prevent us altogether from grasping the significance of the book-child theme within the play as a whole.

TRIANGULAR PATTERNS

To ignore this theme is to turn aside, understandably perhaps, from some of the deepest unconscious fears, phantasies and anxieties which the play arouses: that if we surrender to some of our darkest impulses, for instance, we may destroy everything that is good in the world. It is also, at the same time, to miss the way in which the book-child theme shapes the structure of the play as a whole. Throughout Hedda Gabler there is a triangular patterning which has been given remarkably little attention, despite the fact that it is very prominently highlighted during the scenes between Hedda and Brack:

BRACK. All I want is to have a pleasant intimate circle of friends where I can be useful, in one

way or another, and can come and go freely - like a trusted friend.

HEDDA. Of the husband, you mean?

BRACK. [Leaning forward] To be quite frank, preferably of the wife. But of the husband, too,

in the second place, of course. I assure you that sort of - shall I call it

triangular relationship? - is actually a very pleasant thing for everybody concerned.

(HG, p.300-1)

I shall suggest that in the course of the play this triangular patterning continually forms and re-forms itself - as if in some shifting magnetic field - in three distinct but essentially related figurations. The book-child theme is embedded in the more overt drama of sexual liaisons and rivalries, for example, in that the various couplings suggest a range of possibilities as to the parentage of the 'child'. And because the play generates so many different 'subject positions', in this and other ways, we come to feel that it is being staged in some figurative space in which the potentialities of human nature are being very profoundly explored.

(i) SEXUAL JEALOUSIES

If, as I shall go on to show, the book-child motif is truly the figure in the carpet, it is the play of adult sexual relationships which provides as it were the setting for the more subliminal modulations of the theme. All of the major characters are most obviously defined of course by the parts they play in the kind of triangular situations which are of such absorbing interest to Hedda and Brack. The two female characters (three if we include the non-appearing Mademoiselle Diana) are combined with the three males (four if we include Thea Elvsted's husband) to produce almost every possible coupling. Thea is married to Elvsted, but devoted to their children's tutor, Løvborg; at the close she will form a relationship with Tesman to resurrect the 'child' she created with Løvborg. Hedda is married but not commited to Tesman. Earlier in her life she feared to commit herself to her affair with Løvborg, and now she toys dangerously with Judge Brack. Thea Elvsted is jocularly refered to as an old flame of Tesman's. Now respectably married, however, this complacent husband has no thought that he might have rivals - though in fact Løvborg is jealous of him and Brack is determined to outflank them both. Finally, the two women are also involved in a complex pattern of rivalry. Hedda is jealous of Thea's relationship with Løvborg and of the latter's connection with Mlle Diana, while Thea is jealous of the 'other' woman of Løvborg's imagination - who may again be Mlle Diana but is most probably Hedda herself.

The ways in which sexuality figures in human life are further dramatised in the play through such varying manifestations as the off-stage world of Mlle Diana, which shadows the bourgeois respectabilities, on the one hand, to Aunt Julie's domestic rejoicing in Hedda's pregnancy, on the other. In fact it is only the relationship between Hedda and Brack - a sterile and destructive sparring between egotisms - which has no reference at all to the theme of the 'child'. From Hedda's marriage to Tesman, to the relationship formed during the closing scene by Tesman and Mrs Elvsted (with a view to their resurrecting Løvborg's book-child) each liaison is shaped by this second 'triangular' theme - that is to say, the parental couple with their embryonic offspring. At the level of social themes Ibsen's supposed preoccupation with individual fulfilment is inseparable in this play from the equally powerful theme of responsibility. If it is obvious that Hedda Gabler reworks the plot and themes of A Doll's House one of the major differences is that, unlike the earlier play, Hedda Gabler does not sidestep the question of the children, or child. On the contrary, so intensely is the theme of the child-book imbricated in the sexual relationships that the play does not allow us to think of freedom, fulfilment and responsibility as separable concepts. Conventional readings and some of Ibsen's polemical utterances notwithstanding, this play, as a whole, is so far from proposing an isolated individualism as an ideal that it presents the theme of human potentiality in terms of the creative/destructive couple and moreover makes the fate of the child-book within that setting an essential measure of the relationship itself. So central is this motif that, in my view, the struggle within the play to constitute a realm within which the child-book might survive is the play.

(ii) THE PARENTS-AND-CHILD TRIANGLE - KLEIN, WINNICOTT

AND CREATIVITY

In her chapter on 'Art and the depressive position' in Dream, Phantasy and Art Hannah Segal refers to the familiar notion that the 'work of art is often felt by the artist as a symbolic baby' (1991, p.95). In Kleinian terms symbol-making is linked, of course, with the idea of 'reparation'. While the rage and frustrations of infancy are vented, in imagination, against the frustrating object (the breast/mother), the 'depressive position' is reached when the infant becomes able to deal with ambivalent feelings of love and hate towards the frustrating object, to experience guilt and depression about his/her own destructiveness, and to wish to 'restore' the maternal object which has been 'destroyed'. For Hannah Segal this line of thought leads to an important Kleinian paradox, namely that 'the artist's work is new and yet arises from an urge to recreate or restore'. Insofar as creative work is a restoration of lost objects in the internal world it generates a sense of re-discovery; but insofar as the process is necessarily symbolic, the subject 'has the freedom of its use - it is something created anew'. Hannah Segal goes on to capture this Kleinian paradox in a sentence which resonates extraordinarily, I believe, with Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. Of the dual process of restoration/creation she writes: 'It is a restoring in one's internal world of a parental couple creating a new baby.' (p.95)

In my view this is a beautifully succinct statement of the dynamic which engages us so deeply in Hedda Gabler. The reason why we are so actively engaged in Ibsen's play is that we are drawn into a realm of potentiality - by the means which I have outlined. The world of the play is not given - it is not there in the list of dramatis personae, in an account of the plot, or even in the action on the stage insofar as this might be the object of a spectator's attention. The work which Ibsen has given us is there only as we participate in the play of effects whereby the existence of a realm in which the 'baby' might have a life is always in question: throughout the play this realm is always being created - and destroyed.

The play concerns itself with the making and unmaking of the human world. The sense of some fundamental breakdown within the community of the play is dramatised in the strange duality of the book-child theme. In 'Living Creatively' Winnicott writes:

... it has to be remembered that a baby may be conceived uncreatively - that is without being conceived of, without having been arrived at as an idea in the mind. On the other hand, a baby may start up just at the right moment when it is wanted by both parties. In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Edward Albee studies the fate of a baby that is conceived of, but without taking flesh. What a remarkable study in both play and film! (1970, p.48)

Albee's play has striking affinities with Hedda Gabler. The unborn child of the Tesmans' marriage has been conceived but not conceived of, while the book-child of Thea and Løvborg (like George and Martha's imaginary son in the later play) has been conceived of, but is not a fleshly child. Like Albee's play, Hedda Gabler uses the intriguingly subtle theme of the imaginary child to explore what it means to live creatively, and more particularly, what it means when one is unable to find the clue to doing so. For Ibsen, as for Winnicott, there is no more fundamental theme. In Hedda Gabler Ibsen's most memorable character wages a life and death struggle to overcome her sense of futility, to escape from her despair at being unable to live creatively. For Hedda is no more able to create a living conception of her own life than she is to conceive of a life for the child she has conceived with Tesman.

In 'Living Creatively' Winnicott summarises much of his thinking on this subject when he says that 'Creativity... is the retention throughout life of something that belongs properly to the infant experience: the ability to create the world.' He goes on to say that, 'for the baby this is not difficult, because if the mother is able to adapt to the baby's needs, the baby has no initial appreciation of the fact that the world was there before he or she was conceived or conceived of.' (p.40) In a later paragraph he outlines the process whereby creativity is retained as the 'reality principle' makes itself felt:

The infant becomes ready to find a world of objects and ideas, and, at the same pace of growth of this aspect of the baby, the mother is presenting the world to the baby. In this way, by her degree of adaptation at the beginning, the mother enables the baby to experience omnipotence, to actually find what he creates, to create and link up with what is actual. The nett result is that each baby starts up with a new creation of the world. (p.49)

When 'what we create' and 'what we find' are 'linked up' we are of course in the realm of the transitional object, that 'third area' or 'potential space' in which play and symbol-making begin, and continue throughout life (Winnicott, 1971). In the world of Hedda Gabler it is as if there has been some tear in the fabric of things whereby she is denied access to this realm of experience. For her the actual is no more than the actual. At a loss to find the gesture which would effect the transformation she yearns for, Hedda will seek to animate her existence through manipulation of the lives others.

(iii) THE PRIMAL SCENE

What are the obstacles to the creative realisation of the powerful energies embodied in the heroine of Hedda Gabler and those around her? How is it that the birth and survival of the child-book, bound up as they are with the gestation of the play itself, are attended by so much anxiety and apprehension? An initial part of the answer to this question concerns the way in which Freud's 'primal scene' figures in the play - haunts it indeed, from beginning to end. The opening exchange of the play, between Tesman's Aunt Julle, and his servant Berte, notify us that the young couple, Jørgen Tesman and Hedda Gabler, having returned the previous evening from a six month honeymoon trip, are still in bed, though it seems to be quite late in the morning. These events, especially as they are spoken of by these two good-hearted and motherly women, are natural enough in themselves, but everything which subsequently happens in the play serves to make the nature of the sexual relationship between the off-stage couple (which is of course variously constituted) a source of great perplexity for the 'spectator' both on and off the stage, this of course being the essence of the primal scene experience. Here then we have the third variation of the triangular figure which structures the play. The primal scene, in Ibsen's play at least, is the troubling shadow of the process outlined by Hannah Segal. 'The restoration...of the parental couple creating a new baby' constitutes a set of good object relations in the 'inner world', but the primal scene engenders jealousy and, as Melanie Klein suggests, envy. The one promotes a secure relationship between self and world, the other a disturbing confusion between reality and fantasy: the benign autonomy of the inner stage on the one hand, and the anxious fascination of the peep-show - with the voyeur as victim, on the other.

Projected for us by Aunt Julle and Berte, our initial impression of the sexual couple is, it seems, perfectly wholesome. In every aspect of the play, however, benign impressions rapidly give way to a sense of unease, anxiety and menace. If the primal scene effects are complex and multi-layered, however, one reason for this is that while Hedda Gabler features as the female partner in that opening sequence, for much of the play she figures as the child-spectator. Her intimacy with Judge Brack, for instance, is constituted not so much by any mutual passion but by his feeding her sexual curiosity with gossip about the goings on in circles which are closed to her:

BRACK. And so the procession starts, gentleman. I hope we shall have a gay time, as a certain charming lady puts it.

HEDDA. Ah, if only that charming lady could be there, invisible -

BRACK. Why invisible?

HEDDA. So as to hear a little of your gaiety - uncensored, Mr Brack. (HG, p.323)

On the following morning Brack describes to Hedda how Løvborg 'fetched up at a party at Mademoiselle Diana's rooms', and how - when Løvborg created a scene about the disappearance of his pocket-book, the result was 'a general fight in which both the ladies and the gentlemen were involved' (HG, p.336). And all this comes to a climax when Brack later reveals to Hedda that Løvborg did not die in hospital but was actually 'found shot in - in Mademoiselle Diana's boudoir' (HG, p.358. Though the nuance of Ibsen's text is apparently untranslatable, we are to understand that the bullet destroys Løvborg's sexual organ. See Durbach, p.47.) During the course of the play the scene of sexual coupling, which remains pretty constantly before the mind's eye, is transformed from the domestic picture of the newly-weds asleep in bed, to that of an indiscriminate and deadly combat taking place in a house of ill-repute. Freud noted that the primal scene is felt by the child to be sadistic in nature, but he did not explain this finding. Melanie Klein holds that the child projects its own envious hatred into the scene - and into the phantasy of the 'combined parent figure' - which both denies the parents' sexuality and embodies the child's hostility ('a general fight in which both the ladies and the gentlemen were all involved'). The processes of splitting, doubling and inversion in the play are beyond anything like exhaustive analysis, but perhaps the most important version of the primal triangle is that constituted by Løvborg and Thea - with Hedda as 'spectator'. In my view Hedda's notion that she breaks up the Løvborg-Thea relationship in order to 'liberate' Løvborg is a transparent rationalisation of the ruthless envy which impels her to destroy this creatively parental liaison. In the end it seems that the only staging of the primal scene which Hedda will be prepared as it were to live with is the dreadful inversion of it which is constituted by the scene of her own death - where she turns the paternal pistol-phallus against herself and seeks an astonishingly paradoxical affirmation of selfhood through the psychic erasure of any trace of her own origin.

HEDDA GABLER, JØRGEN TESMAN AND THE MASKS OF ENVY

The stereotypical reading of Hedda Gabler, which sees Tesman, with his relatives and household, as representing a claustrophobically bourgeois complacency - and Hedda, by a simple antithesis, as the imprisoned spirit of authentic protest - makes the real complexities of Ibsen's play impossible to discern. Within the terms of this conventional opposition Hedda's marriage, for example, can only remain an unaccountable riddle. Her own explanation - 'I had simply danced myself out...' (HG, p.299) - is patently inadequate, another characteristic rationalisation. Are we not invited to ponder the idea that in some very much unacknowledged fashion Hedda Gabler is actually drawn to Jørgen Tesman and what he represents for her? A powerful insight of Melanie Klein's seems to me to make clear how this might be so:

A particular cause of envy is the absence of it in others. The envied person is felt to possess what is at bottom most prized and most desired - and this is a good object, which also implies a good character and sanity. Moreover the person who can ungrudgingly enjoy other people's creative work and happiness is spared the torments of envy, grievance and persecution. Whereas envy is a source of great unhappiness, a relative freedom from it is felt to underlie contented and peaceful states of mind - ultimately sanity. (p.41)

The subject of envy comes up at a crucial moment in one of the scenes between Hedda and Tesman, when Tesman is about to reveal that he has Løvborg's manuscript in his possession. Before revealing this he makes clear in his own way how much the book has impressed him:

TESMAN. You can't think what a book that's going to be. I should think it's going to be one of

the most remarkable things that's ever been written. Just think!

HEDDA. No doubt. That doesn't interest me.

HEDDA. I must admit one thing Hedda. When I read it, a perfectly detestable feeling came over me.

TESMAN. Detestable?

TESMAN. There I was envying Ejlert for having been able to write a thing like that. Just think, Hedda.

HEDDA. Yes, yes. I am. (HG, pp 330-1)

The ironies which arise from this interchange are by no means what might be expected. To begin with let us note that it is Tesman who is stirred by the book, and Hedda who is too self-enclosed to take any interest in it, even though the play leads us to believe that she is one of its begetters, and the critics would have us believe that she is the poetic-imaginative spirit of the play. At the same time, if the kind of innocence which Tesman displays in this passage makes him frequently appear comically naïve in the eyes of the audience and tediously limited in Hedda's, the 'relative freedom' from discontent which very much goes with it, is also itself enviable.

That Hedda should despise what she is drawn to is a not unfamiliar trait in human nature. In my view she is not only drawn to Tesman's good nature in itself, but to the atmosphere of motherly concern which has given him a sense of well-being not always distinguishable, it's true, from the self-centredeness of the spoilt child. Nor is Aunt Julle's affectionate concern for those around her merely shallow or sentimental. Her care for her sister is uncomplaining and long-suffering, and whether Hedda Gabler's dealings with death are any more 'authentic' is, I would suggest, at least debateable. At any rate Hedda's irrational attacks on Tesman's world, as exemplified by the episode with Aunt Julle's new hat, can clearly be read as expressions of her destructive envy.

HEDDA GABLER AND HER WORLD OF OBJECTS

If the play gives us many indications of the benign experiences which Tesman has incorporated in his psyche, what does duty for the good object in Hedda's inner world is the pair of pistols previously belonging to her father. The inner poverty of which she speaks to Thea is highlighted by the fact that the pistols are indeed the only objects, animate or inanimate, real or imaginary, with which she has what might be refered to as positive relationship. It is an obvious feature of the play that whereas Tesman's world is a maternal one, it appears that for Hedda the only available identifications are with paternal objects. What is equally obvious from a Kleinian point of view is that the phallic pistols substitute as good object for the maternal breast. If the portrait of Hedda's father presides over the action of the play and his pistols figure so significantly within it, of course it is conspicuously the case that no reference is made to Hedda's mother. That the mother figures as absence is highlighted, I think, when Hedda explains to Brack in Act III how she and Tesman have come to be living in 'the very home [she] wished for'. Hedda recalls that once when Tesman was at a loss for something to talk about, and feeling sorry for him, she said - 'quite casually - that I should like to live here in this villa.' This 'thoughtlessness', she goes on, 'had its consequences', for it led to their marrying:

HEDDA. ...You see, it was through this passion for the villa of the late Mrs Falk that Jørgen Tesman and I found our way to an understanding. That led to our engagement and marriage and wedding trip and everything. Well, well. As one make's one's bed one

must lie on it, I was going to say.

BRACK. This is delightful! And all the time, it seems, you weren't interested in the least?

HEDDA. No. Heaven knows, I wasn't.

BRACK. Well, but now? Now that we have made it more or less comfortable for you?

HEDDA. Oh! I seem to smell lavender and dried roses in all the rooms. But perhaps Aunt Julle brought the smell with her.

BRACK [laughing]. No, I should think it's more likely the late Mrs Falk bequeathed it to you!

HEDDA. It reminds one of the departed, all right. Like one's bouquet, the day after a ball... My friend you can't imagine how horribly bored I'm going to be out here.

BRACK. But won't there be some object or other in life for you to work for, like other people, Madam Hedda?

HEDDA. An object ... that would have something fascinating about it?

BRACK. Preferably, of course.

HEDDA. Lord knows what kind of an object it could be... (HG, pp 304-5)

According to Hedda's account her interest in the house of the late Mrs Falk is as casually motivated as her marrying Tesman, but the intensity of the play of effects in this passage again gives the lie to Hedda's dismissive rationalisations. The house is not only that of a dead woman, but is linked by sensuous association with the world of Aunt Julle, who represents loving concern on the one hand, but is linked with the dying Aunt Rina on the other. It reminds Hedda of 'the departed', and like 'one's bouquet the day after a ball', it seems to be associated with absence and loss, with a bliss which is gone forever.

In her conversation with Brack, Hedda goes on to toy with the notion that Tesman might go into politics, but, having pointed out why this is an unlikely development, Brack hints broadly that before long she might have another kind of responsibility to live for, whereupon Hedda declares that she has 'no gift for that kind of thing', and that indeed the only thing she does have a gift for 'is boring [herself] to death.' (HG, pp 306-7) A sequence is established here which will be repeated later in the play. It is in Act III that the book-child comes into Hedda's possession, and it is at the end of the act that, bloodcurdlingly, she burns it. Meanwhile, when Tesman has told Hedda how he came to find the manuscript and has confirmed that such an 'inspired' production could not be re-written, she hands him - 'casually', as the stage direction says - a note in which, as he quickly informs Hedda, Aunt Julle tells him that her sister is dying. At certain moments, when Hedda faces the prospect of motherhood, it is as if she finds herself haunted by the shadow of a dead or dying mother figure; and her impulse at this moment is to erase the existence, real or imagined, of any offspring she herself might have. That is to say, it is as if she seeks to destroy the creative at the very roots of her own being.

TRANSITION AND TRANSFORMATION

This familiar array of unresolvable questions indicates that the dénouement of the play is the climax of the oscillating relationship between Hedda and her environment which has been apparent from the earliest scenes. I have already suggested that, in spite of herself, Hedda is drawn to Tesman's world on account of the enviably benign object-relations which it appears to embody. In the final section of this paper I extend the argument by calling on Winnicott's thinking about 'the use of an object' (Winnicott, 1969), especially as it has beeen elaborated by Christopher Bollas, through the concepts of the 'transformational object' and the 'destiny drive'. I suggest, paradoxically enough, that in throwing in her lot with Jørgen Tesman, Hedda Gabler is seeking an environment in which she might experience a transformation of her life. In the event she is unable to use the objects in her internal and external worlds to give shape to her belief in the 'beautiful', or what Northam calls her 'residually creative sense of human potentiality'. At the end of everything what she stages is a dramatisation of her strange illusion that only through destruction can her world come into being - that destruction is creation.

The audience is alerted to the problematic relationship between Hedda and the setting in which she finds herself even as the play begins. Almost her first words are: 'One has to get used to anything new. By degrees.' (HG, p. 273) During the next few moments she appears concerned about the open veranda door, the sunlight pouring in, and the flowers which fill the room. It is then that Aunt Julle presents Tesman with a package containing the old pair of slippers to which she knows he is attached. 'Aunt Rina embroidered them for me in bed, lying ill like that. Just imagine how many memories are worked into them', he says to Hedda. 'Not for me, particularly', she replies. For readers of Winnicott it must be evident that the slippers are for Tesman a transitional object; they belong to a mode of experience in which past and present, self and other are interwoven to create a fabric which is always in the making and therefore gives point to life. Moreover we sense that his preoccupation with 'domestic crafts' in Brabant in the middle ages is a continuation of the same theme - which has carried him little further into adult life. It is precisely because Tesman remains caught up in his early attachments of this kind that Hedda is drawn to him in spite of herself. Tantalisingly, for Hedda, Tesman and his slippers represent the baffling clue to the way in which 'objects' are used to create a world.

Several moments of related significance follow the exchange about the slippers, in an interesting series. Hedda's unconscionable behaviour over the hat dramatises her immediate response to this initial episode. Though she later tells Brack that such behaviour 'just comes over [her]' and she has no idea 'how to explain it' (HG, p.303), her impulse in this case is clearly to desecrate the signifier of her deprivation. A moment later, when Tesman invites his Aunt to notice how 'plump' Hedda has grown, Miss Tesman is overjoyed to think that she is pregnant. Hedda's reaction during the subsequent exchange gives the first indication of the way she recoils from the prospect of motherhood. There is no potential space in her life for a child to come into; she cannot, as I've argued, conceive of the idea. If Tesman can scarcely conceive of it either, the reason is that he himself is still in the place of the child. From this point of view, then, there is an oddly inverted mirror relationship between Hedda and her husband.

When Miss Tesman has departed we see Hedda, alone on the stage, 'raising her arms and clenching her hands, as if in fury' (HG, p.276). On Tesman's return she remarks to him how withered the flowers look, and goes on to reject her husband's appeal to her to behave a little more like one of the family. There follows a brief discussion on the question of her piano. It is a conversation which shows how different is Hedda's life-world from Tesman's. What we would like to feel at this point is that the piano suggests one way in which Hedda might be accustomed to express her potentia, to elaborate a personal aesthetic, and to acquire a sense of 'living creatively'. But the turn of the conversation oddly undermines any such expectation. For Hedda's concern is simply that this 'old piano' of hers 'doesn't go with these other things' (HG, p. 277). She wishes to see it moved to 'the back room' and a new one purchased for the drawing room. The result is that we see the piano, after all, as a mere physical object occupying a physical space in the house. We do not feel that two pianos would fill up the absences in Hedda's life any more than one.

If the first act of the play is among other things a remarkable study of the life-worlds of Hedda and Tesman through their relationships with a range of environmental objects, then of course the two most dramatically significant of these objects are the portrait of Hedda's father, and the pair of pistols. Each of these emphasises the dissonant relationship between Hedda and her new environment - the portrait because it is a presence which, hauntingly, is never refered to directly throughout the play; the pistols because, somewhat similarly, they create the impression of a potential detonation which would destroy this world at a stroke. In psychoanalytic terms the portrait and the pistols are signifiers of Hedda's 'object-relations' (as are the slippers in Tesman's case). Hedda's desire is to articulate her inner world (her object-relations) in a way which would promote a sense of living creatively, but the way in which the portrait and the pistols figure in her world suggests that she is caught up in the repetition of a ghost-filled past rather than engaged in the creation of a future.

Why does Hedda Gabler commit suicide? It is a moment of astonishing complexity. She has been trapped by Judge Brack and the humiliation of it is too much for her to live with perhaps. At the same time she is in despair at the failure of Løvborg's suicide to ennoble his life, or hers. Yet, almost concealed by the superficial ironies, a greater despair haunts the following exchange:

HEDDA ...Doesn't it feel strange to you, Thea? Here you are sitting with Jørgen Tesman just as

you once sat with Ejlert Løvborg.

MRS ELVSTED. Well, if only I could inspire your husband too -

HEDDA. Oh, that will come out all right - in time.

TESMAN. Yes, do you know, Hedda, I really think I am beginning to feel something of the kind.

But you go back and sit down with Judge Brack again.

HEDDA. Is there nothing here I can help you two with?

TESMAN. Not a thing in the world... (HG, p.362)

How ironic that Tesman should have the unwitting power so to exclude Hedda Gabler from the circle of life, and that the two objects of her envious scorn, Tesman and Thea, should unite to restore the object she has destroyed. And how ironic also that they should begin to use the book-child (however ineptly and improbably) to create a new future. A moment later, with inevitable dramatic logic, Hedda Gabler 'goes into the inner room...draws the curtain', and sits down at her instrument: 'Suddenly she is heard playing a wild dance tune on the piano'. The last nail is hammered home when, on account of Aunt Rina, and 'Ejlert', Tesman cuts short her first defiant gesture of aesthetic self-expression. Then, within Hedda's hearing, he goes on to suggest to Mrs Elvsted that she should move into Aunt Julle's house so that they can continue their work together. During these moments Hedda Gabler is thrust back, even more deeply, into the void of her self-experience: it is as if life has no place for her, whether as begetter or begotten.

In whatever terms we think of it Hedda Gabler's inheritance is death and despair, absence and loss. Experiencing herself as an uncreated void her 'unthought' project is to stage the scene of her own conception. Yet at the same time the play reveals in all its workings that Hedda has no 'inner image of psychic procreativity.' (Bollas, 1993, p.84) While the play as a whole is struggling to create such an image the troubling enigma of the central character is that for her this same struggle constitutes a maddening aporia: to conceive the inconceivable. The logic by which the dilemma finds its resolution is even more strange. It is when she destroys everything - that is to say, herself and the future (her unborn child) - that Hedda Gabler finally succeeds in making her own idiomatic gesture. To destroy everything is to leave nothing left to want, nothing left to envy. If nothing is left to be reduced to nothing, something may begin to be. 'A terrible beauty is born', and a destiny is fatefully fulfilled.

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Macbeth's Soliloquies (Part 1)

If it were done when 'tis done... (1.7.1-29).

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'd jump the life to come. But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends th' ingredience of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips. He's here in double trust;
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
Who should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on th' other -.

If it were done...quickly ] i.e. "If I could guarantee that no further complications arise from the murder, and the whole matter would be neatly concluded, then it would be best to kill Duncan and kill him quickly".

trammel up ] to entangle in a net from which nothing can break free. Thus, if the assassination of Duncan could ensnare the crown, he would not hesitate to commit the crime.

catch ] a continuation of the netting metaphor.

his surcease ] Duncan's death.

here ] on earth.

bank and shoal ] Critics are divided on the meaning of this passage. A few critics argue that it is a classroom metaphor, with "bank" actually "bench" and "shoal" meaning "school". This theory developed because the folio version of the play spells "shoal" "schoole", and one of the meanings of "bank" in Shakespeare's day was "bench". "Time is thus seen as the period of judgement, testing, or 'crisis', and as a school; corresponding to these meanings we have later in the speech, 'judgment here' and 'teach bloody instructions'" (Muir 38). However, with the knowledge that "schoole" was a common seventeenth-century spelling of "shoal", it is more likely that the line corresponds to the previous metaphor suggested by "trammel" and "catch", and that "bank" means "sand-bank" and "shoal" means "shallow" (an elevated sandbar which is smooth and on which there is a depth of water eleven meters or less). Therefore, our life on earth is compared to a shoal with its shallow water, and our afterlife is the deep and wide ocean.

jump the life to come ] risk our afterlife.

have judgment ] are to be judged.

that...plague the inventor ] so that he who kills a king to gain the throne teaches his bloody method to others -- a method that will return to hurt the one who first decided to commit regicide. Macbeth knows that if he murders the king to gain the crown, another, hungry for power, will surely do the same to him when he becomes king.

even-handed ] impartial.

Commends ] presents.

chalice ] goblet; cup used in the communion service.

ingredience ] 1) ingredients; 2) Kittredge argues "elements composing the draught in the chalice" (20). This would be in keeping with the allusion to the goblet used in the communion service.

faculties ] powers as king. Duncan has been a kind and dedicated ruler.

clear ] pure.

plead ] advocate; plead their case.

taking-off ] a euphemism for Duncan's death.

striding ] standing with legs apart.

blast ] gust of air.

cherubim ] an order of angels. The hierarchy of angels ranked from lowest to highest into the following nine orders: angels, archangels, principalities, powers, virtues, dominions, thrones, cherubim, and seraphim.

sightless couriers ] invisible messengers -- i.e. the winds.

Tears...wind ] The tears of all who learn of Macbeth's crime will come as a downpour and "check the storm of their anger" (Wilson 114).

intent ] intentions, purpose.

Vaulting ] leaping (onto a horse's back). "I have no spur to stimulate my guilty intention except ambition -- ambition which is like a too eager rider, who in vaulting into the saddle o'erleaps himself and falls on the other side of the horse" (Muir 41).

th' other ] the other side. Macbeth's last words are interrupted by the entrance of Lady Macbeth.

COMMENTARY

Macbeth's first soliloquy reaffirms that the three witches, by informing him that he will be "king hereafter" (1.3.50), have merely kindled his own innermost desire to obtain the throne. Their prediction may encourage Macbeth to act upon his secret thoughts, as does the prodding of Lady Macbeth, but it does not dictate Macbeth's course of action. Macbeth makes a conscious choice to forsake morality and pursue his "Vaulting ambition" (28). This soliloquy exposes Macbeth's conflicting feelings about the murder. His first thoughts revolve around the consequences of committing the crime. In lines 1-12 his primary concern and reason for hesitation is the possibility that someone will exact that "even-handed Justice" (10) upon him. Once Macbeth usurps the throne there will be others who will plot to steal it from him. Some critics seem to end their analysis at this point and conclude that Macbeth "wishes intensely the death of Duncan" (Langford xxxv) and that only his fear of potential ramifications is a deterrent. However, the second half of the soliloquy supports the fact that Macbeth is deeply troubled by the horror of killing Duncan, who is a benevolent ruler, honest man, and good friend. It is guilt and not fear of the consequences that is Macbeth's greatest obstacle.

Macbeth's Soliloquies (Part 2)

Is this a dagger which I see before me (2.1.33-61)

Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still,
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There's no such thing:
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one halfworld
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace.
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
A bell rings
I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

fatal ] sent by fate.

sensible ] perceived by the senses (particularly touch and sight).

heat-oppress'd ] fevered. In the Renaissance, heat was considered a fluid that could literally press on the brain and cause fever and delirium.

marshall'st me ] guide or usher me.

Mine eyes...rest ] Either Macbeth's sight is being fooled by his other senses or else his sight alone is the only sense to be trusted.

dudgeon ] wooden handle.

gouts ] From the Latin gutta, meaning large drops or splashes, often gushing or bursting.

informs ] takes shape.

Now o'er...dead ] Because it is night, half of the world is in darkness and everything seems dead.

curtain'd ] A reference to the curtains drawn around a four-post bed (the standard bed in Elizabethan England).

Witchcraft...offerings ] Hecate, daughter of Perses and Asteria, was a magician who raised a temple to Diana in which she performed human sacrifice. Medea and Circe are her children. Note that her name is disyllabic in the play (you do not pronounce the final 'e'). Hecate's offerings are her ritual sacrifices.

Alarum'd ] summoned to action.

sentinel ] watchman; guard.

Tarquin's ravishing strides ] The Roman king, Tarquin (Sextus Tarquinius), rapes Lucrece, the act upon which Shakespeare's long poem of the same name is based. Macbeth and Tarquin have many similarities. Compare Macbeth's soliloquy to the following two stanzas from The Rape of Lucrece:

Now stole upon the time the dead of night,
When heavy sleep had closed up mortal eyes:
No comfortable star did lend his light,
No noise but owls' and wolves' death-boding cries;
Now serves the season that they may surprise
The silly lambs: pure thoughts are dead and still,
While lust and murder wake to stain and kill.

And now this lustful lord leap'd from his bed,
Throwing his mantle rudely o'er his arm;
Is madly toss'd between desire and dread;
Th' one sweetly flatters, th' other feareth harm;
But honest fear, bewitch'd with lust's foul charm,
Doth too too oft betake him to retire,
Beaten away by brain-sick rude desire.

sure ] solid.

stones prate ] the stones speak. Macbeth knows that, although those around him are unaware of his crimes, the earth and the heavens know all. Notice also the connection to Habakkuk 2.10,11: "Thou hast consulted shame to thine own house, by destroying many people, and hast sinned against thine own soule. For the stone shall cry out of the wall and the beam out of the timber shall answer it, woe unto him that buildeth a town with blood". For more biblical imagery in this passage see my article: Biblical Imagery in Macbeth.

take...it ] The noise of the stones reveal Macbeth's movement toward Duncan, and thus his evil intentions. The sound cuts through the "present horror", i.e. the dreadful silence, from the time that suits it best -- the dead of night.

words...gives ] Talking about the murder is wearing away his courage to follow through.

COMMENTARY

Macbeth, after discussing the crime with Lady Macbeth, has decided to go through with the "terrible feat" (1.7.75). Now he sits alone, waiting for the bell which will summon him to murder Duncan, pondering his decision one final time. The focus of the soliloquy, the invisible dagger, is our first glimpse of Macbeth's powerful imagination – imagination that is largely responsible for his mental torment throughout the drama. Although Macbeth knows that the dagger is an optical illusion, and suspects that it could be brought about by his potentially "heat-oppressed brain" (39), he nonetheless allows the phantom dagger, soon stained with imaginary "gouts of blood" (46), to affect him greatly. Enhancing the ominous and eerie atmosphere of the speech is the use of successive allusions to people and practices which conjure up images of satanic and earthly evil. Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft and a strong presence overall in Macbeth, is preparing her sacrificial victims, and murder himself, summoned by his trusted watchman, the wolf, moves with the power and speed of evil king Tarquin towards his prey. (To read a transcript of an actual ritual where Hecate is invoked, click here).

Just as talk of the murder is about to stifle his courage, Macbeth's intense illusion is shattered by the bell, a signal from Lady Macbeth that Duncan's chamberlains are asleep, and Macbeth races away to commit the heinous crime. One can only wonder if a few more moments of deliberation would have changed Macbeth's mind.

Macbeth's Soliloquies (Part 3)

Is this a dagger which I see before me (2.1.33-61)

fatal ] sent by fate.

sensible ] perceived by the senses (particularly touch and sight).

heat-oppress'd ] fevered. In the Renaissance, heat was considered a fluid that could literally press on the brain and cause fever and delirium.

marshall'st me ] guide or usher me.

Mine eyes...rest ] Either Macbeth's sight is being fooled by his other senses or else his sight alone is the only sense to be trusted.

dudgeon ] wooden handle.

gouts ] From the Latin gutta, meaning large drops or splashes, often gushing or bursting.

informs ] takes shape.

Now o'er...dead ] Because it is night, half of the world is in darkness and everything seems dead.

curtain'd ] A reference to the curtains drawn around a four-post bed (the standard bed in Elizabethan England).

Alarum'd ] summoned to action.

sentinel ] watchman; guard.

sure ] solid.

words...gives ] Talking about the murder is wearing away his courage to follow through.

COMMENTARY

Macbeth's Soliloquies (Part 4)

She should have died hereafter (5.5.17-28)

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

NOTES

She...hereafter ] This line has caused much debate. Four possible meanings are (1) she should have died after the battle when there would be time to mourn properly; (2) she should have waited for me, seeing that my death is so near; (3) she would have died at sometime, either now or later; (4) she should have died after the battle for now, with her gone, I know I shall not win. For more see the commentary below.

word ] death.

petty pace ] at this meaningless pace.

syllable ] final trace.

recorded time ] as opposed to eternity. It is a possible reference to the book of Revelation when Christ will sit in final judgment of mankind: "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works" (Rev. 20.12).

dusty death ] Note Psalm 22.15: "Thou hast brought me into the dust of death."

candle ] Note Job 18.5-6: "The light of the wicked shall be quenched...and his candle shall be out with him."

walking shadow ] See Wisdom of Solomon 2.4: "Our life shall pass away as the trace of a cloud, and come to nought as the mist that is driven away with the beams of the sun. For our time is as a shadow that passeth away and after our end there is no returning."

poor player ] pitiful actor. "The emblem writers of Shakespeare's day often pictured life as a stage and men and women as actors. Shakespeare drew freely from these writers as he found use for their thought and teaching. But in this passage one might easily find traces of the sadness that must have been in his own thought as his mind dwelt for a moment on the breaks in the ranks of his own little company and the actors who had strutted their little hour upon the stage of the Globe theatre and now were heard no more" (Coles 270).

frets ] worries.

stage ] i.e. life. Shakespeare likely knew Montaigne's thoughts on the matter: "Is it not a noble farce, wherein kings, republics, and emperors have for so many ages played their parts, and to which the whole vast universe serves for a theatre?" (Of the most Excellent Men). Also see As You Like It, (2.7.144).

a tale/Told ] Note the reference to Psalm 90.9, addressing the transience of life: "we spend our years as a tale that is told."

COMMENTARY

In this final soliloquy we uncover the ultimate tragedy of Macbeth. "It is the tragedy of the twilight and the setting-in of thick darkness upon a human soul" (Dowden 66). Macbeth's heinous acts throughout the play have resulted in his last, horrible conclusion about life: it is utterly meaningless. Our days on this earth serve no purpose other than to thrust us toward "dusty death". Life is a seemingly endless and depressing succession of bleak days creeping along at a "petty pace". Our time on this earth is so unsubstantial that it can only be compared to a shadow; so unreal that it can only be compared to a stage on which frets a pitiful actor. When the play is over his character disappears into nothingness, and has left nothing significant behind.

Macbeth's feelings toward Lady Macbeth in this soliloquy are not as clear as the overlying theme. As seen above in the notes, there are four, and possibly several more, opinions regarding Macbeth's initial reaction when he hears that his wife is dead. Those who take the first line to mean "she would have died at sometime, either now or later" usually argue that it illustrates Macbeth's callous lack of concern for Lady Macbeth. However, it seems more likely that the line is a combination of meanings (1) and (4) cited in the notes above:

[Macbeth] has said (in Scene III of this act) that the battle will cheer him ever after or disseat him now. Up to this time he had expected to win the battle; he was ready to laugh the siege to scorn when interrupted by the cry of women. And may not his visionary thought have pictured the victory as restoring him to the man he once was? He pauses on the word "hereafter" (there are two missing feet in the meter), and realizes that the time will never come now. Sadly he reflects that if it could have been, if he could have gone back, then there would have been time to consider that word, death, and to mourn properly. But now, now that there is to be no victory, and no going back, now that she is gone the tomorrows creep on with their insignificant slow pace to the last syllable of recorded time. (Coles 269-79)

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To Strut and Fret Upon the Stage:

Theatrical Interpretation of Sources for Macbeth

Literary and theatrical criticisms of drama, particularly of Shakespeare, have long been at odds with each other, with a rapprochement coming into sight only within the last few decades. Literary criticism tends to concentrate on plays as tissues of symbols and philosophy, to the ire of practical actors searching for clues to characterization. Theatrical criticism, on the other hand, leans more towards character analysis, the sort of psychological study sometimes leading towards nebulous theorizing like "How many children had Lady Macbeth?" Too often it leaves dramatic source material only to the minute examination of literary scholars and historians. Yet studies of sources can open a world of ideas to the dramatic artist, in either conceptions of a play as a whole or for specific character sketches.

In this paper, I plan to examine Shakespeare's primary source materials for Macbeth, including extracts from Raphael Holinshed's historical works, in light of their suggestions for practical production. The performance side of analysis will appear in examples drawn from the recent Baker Shakespeare performances of Macbeth (in which I played Banquo) and the production notebooks of Glen Byam Shaw for his 1955 production at Stratford-upon-Avon (edited by Michael Mullin and published by the University of Missouri Press in 1976 as Macbeth Onstage).

Examination of Macbeth spins a complex web of textual history, comprising interrelated and plagiarized historical accounts, other plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and a host of current political events surrounding the accession of James VI of Scotland to the throne of England, thus forming the United Kingdom. This paper will cast primary emphasis on the historical sources: potential political sources, such as the Gowrie conspiracy or the Gunpowder Plot, are by far secondary to the historical influences, and, while interesting, supply more information about chronologies than characters. Similarly, many sources are notable for influencing word-choice or metaphors in Shakespeare's work but, except where such borrowing sheds significant light on characters or situations, it will be ignored.

Raphael Holinshed and his predecessor historians supply the basic historical data for the story of Macbeth, and Shakespeare's modifications to that story can tell actors and directors a great deal about his possible intentions on the way the tale should be played. The most obvious change to the historical events is compression: Shakespeare's two main sources in Holinshed (Donwald's murder of King Duff when "kindled in wrath by the words of his wife" in 967 A.D. and Macbeth's usurpation around 1040 A.D.) lie over seventy years apart chronologically, and each spans several years. Yet the play itself passes in a blur and rush of realized ambition and consequent death, lasting perhaps two months. The three invasions in Holinshed, by Makdowald and his "kerns and gallowglasses," by Sueno and his Norwegians, and by Canute's Danes in revenge for Sueno's defeat, combine to one mammoth battle related in I.ii. Macbeth's ten years of beneficent rule are swallowed up in the pause between Acts II and III with no notice by any of his associates or enemies, and his seven years as a tyrant pass in a welter of short and action-filled scenes.

This compression and streamlining of source material confirms what many directors of Macbeth have come to realize: the play must move lightly, quickly: "as though one were running down a great flight of steps in a nightmare" (Mullin, p. 17) as Stratford director Shaw put it. The play cannot be bogged down in cumbersome set changes or long pantomimes or dumb-shows, or else the pacing, the ruinous speed Shakespeare has been so careful to build into his version of the source materials, will fail -- as will the show. Shaw designed a simple set, with flying backdrops and alternate use of forestage and back areas, to allow seamless transitions between prepared sets, often with blackouts as short as five seconds. Baker's production this year, though working with a much smaller budget, managed similar speed with mimimal set and frenetic percussion music to enliven even the longer blackouts.

But what type of man is the title character himself, Shakespeare's Macbeth, cobbled together from historical accounts and playwright's imagination? As mentioned, Macbeth's decade of good rule is eliminated -- his decay is swift and sudden after Duncan's murder. That crime itself, the killing of Duncan, receives different treatments in source and in drama. Donwald has his servants kill King Duff and then spirit the body away to a secret grave under a river in the fields: much is made of the process of the murder. Holinshed's Macbeth accomplishes his dirty deed in a much shorter narrative, but even he has assistance, from "his trustie friends, amongst whom Banquho was the chiefest," and then takes up the kingship for a peaceful and just reign a decade long.

But Shakespeare's Macbeth is all alone with his Lady in his crime, and the plan for the murder is simplicity itself: the action and interest of the play lie in the aftermath of the deed. This change, more than any other, rebukes those literary critics who argue that the Folio Macbeth has had extensive cuts, including a murder scene: any such addition would be dramatically superfluous, contrary to Shakespeare's obvious intentions. Indeed, on stage, "[Shaw's] staging emphasized not the murder, but the discovery of the murder" (Mullin, p. 249). The events of II.iii -- the suspense during the Porter's banter with the audience and then with Macduff and Lennox; the confusion of the discovery, as Lady Macbeth faints and the princes Malcolm and Donalbain discuss flight from the country -- are all additions by Shakespeare. Malcolm and Donalbain's departure appears in Holinshed, but the immediacy of their argument on stage makes it a significant part of the chaos of regicide, a more vital spectacle than Holinshed's tale of Donwald's overzealous murder of King Duff's drunken chamberlains.

Indeed, Shakespeare seems to have taken pains to make Macbeth less effective in his plotting than Holinshed's semi-historical figure. Holinshed's Macbeth invites "Banquho with his sonne named Fleance, to come to a supper that he had prepared for them, which was in deed, as he had devised, present death at the hands of certeine murderers, whom he hired to execute that deed, appointing them to meet with the same Banquho and his sonne without the palace, as they returned to their lodgings, and there to slea them...." Shakespeare's character's plan is much more prone to disaster: the invitation is to a large, well-attended feast, and the murder occurs beforehand, so that the murdered guests are sooner missed and suspicion is sooner aroused (as in Lennox's speech in III.vi). Holinshed's ruler is a cruel tyrant, Shakespeare's a growing paranoiac whose mind is slipping away under the weight of guilt and supernatural forces. This mental fragmentation, already apparent in the play, becomes even clearer in light of Shakespeare's modifications to his sources.

But it is in the minor characters that theatrical criticism of the sources proves most helpful. Small parts are often considered the most difficult for actors to play: fewer lines in the script means fewer clues around which to construct a character. The sources can provide additional clues, by either pointing out contrasts with the play or by supplying additional information or viewpoints.

I found Holinshed's Chronicles of great use during rehearsals for Baker Shakespeare's Macbeth, while I was trying to "find" Banquo. My first concept for the character was that of a serious, forthright, virtuous, slightly "stuck-up" Scottish noble who eschewed flattery. But this preliminary concept refused to fit the text: my so-called "ornithology monologue" ("This guest of summer, / The temple-haunting martlet...." (I.vi.3-4)) would not read as anything but pure flattery towards Duncan, and the annunciation scene with the witches (I.iii) always seemed to play flatly with a stern Banquo. Then I read Holinshed's Chronicles, and found traces of a different sort of thane.

Shakespeare had to be wary of how he portrayed Banquo, since the semi-legendary thane of Lochquhaber was the ancestor of King James I. But Holinshed describes Banquo's assistance in the murder of King Duncan, and that was the spark to make me realize that Banquo could be ambitious too: he had as much, or more, riding on the witches' prophecy as Macbeth. "Why, by the verities on thee made good / May they not be my oracles as well, / And set me up in hope?" (III.i. 8-10) suddenly took on new force as plotting on the part of Banquo. He might not be tempted to such dire acts as Macbeth, but could still maneuver for political position, as when my Banquo cut off Rosse (an evil schemer himself, in the Baker production) to agree with Duncan about the "temple-haunting martlet." The character as I conceived him suspected Macbeth of the murder, yet kept his peace, waiting to see how the witches' prophecy would turn out.

On reading Shaw's production notebook, I find I was not alone in my interpretation, for in the 1955 Stratford production Banquo was even more involved in the murder plot. In II.i, as Banquo encounters the seething Macbeth before the murder, Shaw's Banquo seems to guardedly agree with Macbeth with his "I shall be counsell'd." (II.i.29) At the end of III.iii, Macbeth enters to observe (and, indeed, to some extent frighten off) the fleeing Malcolm and Donalbain. Then, "as he goes into the hall he meets Banquo. Nothing is said." (Mullin, p. 109). But a look passes between the two -- a moment of complicity. Shaw even writes that "[Banquo] is the first person, I think, to suspect the truth about the murder of Duncan, but he says nothing. Why?.... I think his silence about the Witches is mostly on account of his own interest in the future of the Crown.... I don't think that it is possible to believe that he remains silent only out of friendship for Macbeth; & if it is fear that prevents him from telling the truth, & he is completely honest, then he could leave the country. Of course he is not a villain but is not a simple honest man either. He has his own particular form of ambition." (Mullin, p. 116)

Yet Banquo need not always be a stern Scot. Holinshed describes how, after encountering the witches, it "was reputed at the first but some vaine fantasticall illusion by Mackbeth and Banquho, insomuch that Banquho would call Mackbeth in jest, king of Scotland; and Mackbeth againe would call him in sport likewise, the father of manie kings," and "the same night after... Banquho jested with [Macbeth]." These descriptions solved the significant problem for Pab Schwendimann (who played Macbeth) and me of how to interpret the characters' lines after the witches disappearance in I.iii: should we be entirely believing or absolutely incredulous, or some mixture of the two? On first encountering the witches, my Banquo was scornful -- "Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear / Your favors nor your hate." (I.iii.60-1) Pab's Macbeth was more trusting, already partly under the influence of the witch's wound-up "charm," interested but still doubtful. The witches' mysterious disappearance forced a more serious note, but we soon fell to jesting, giving a comic motivation to lines such as "Your children shall be kings. / You shall be king!" (I.iii.86-7). Not until the arrival of Rosse and Angus and their news of Cawdor's death were we forced to realize that the witches might have spoken truth. Sources for the play thus provided motivations and subtext for a difficult acting passage, proving theatrically practical as well as literarily interesting.

King Duncan, too, can be significantly "fleshed out" by reference to the sources. Often he is played as a weak, doddering old man -- perhaps as counterpoint to the virile young Macbeth, perhaps because Holinshed says he was "soft and gentle of nature" and "had too much of clemencie," causing the rebellion of Makdowald through over-leniency to offenders. Yet later, says Holinshed, Duncan "began to assemble an armie in most speedie wise, like a verie valiant capteine: for oftentimes it happeneth, that a dull coward and slouthfull person, constrained by necessities, becommeth verie hardie and active," and he cleverly laces his enemies' supplies with sleep-inducing milkwort berries to free himself from seige.

Shakespeare's Duncan is more remote than Holinshed's: he does not lead the army himself, but hears of Macbeth and Banquo's exploits from behind the lines (I.ii). Yet he has no compunctions about sentencing Cawdor to death. Very possibly, Shakespeare's Duncan is a ruler similar to Duke Vincentio in Measure for Measure: ready to hand the cares of state (warfare, in this case) over to lieutenants when dirty work must be done, and then watching to ensure his commands are executed. But Duncan's lieutenant turns on him, and he has no time to corral him again, as Vincentio does with Angelo. While he is alive, though, Duncan shows a fair mind for political maneuvering. Holinshed sets a span of time between Macbeth's victory and Duncan's appointment of Malcolm as successor. As Shaw explains it, "the old King senses the power & ambitions of Macbeth & having honoured him, deliberately chooses this moment [I.iv] to name Malcolm as his successor & make him prince of Cumberland.... He again shows his good will to Macbeth by telling him that he will spend the night at his Castle at Inverness." (Mullin, p. 56) "Crowning Malcolm is a calculated risk, and by favoring Macbeth with his presence, Duncan hopes to cancel any resentment Macbeth might feel" (Mullin, p. 25) -- Duncan himself has his own ambitions. The audience will feel more horror at Macbeth and pity for Duncan if he is an effective ruler cut down in his prime than if he is a doddering, ineffective Lear: Shakespeare's variance from the sources again shows his dramatic intentions.

Analysis of Shakespeare's sources can prove invaluable to dramatic production as well as literary criticism. For either character sketches or purposes of subtext, source documents can provide additional information or views on the events and personalities that make up the tangled skein of a Shakespearean plot. Directors and doctors can thus come together, examining texts in different ways, but all for the purpose of enlightening and enlivening Shakespeare's complex and multi-faceted works.

Quotes from Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland are taken from the ENGL 511 text.

Quotes from Glen Byam Shaw's production notebooks are taken from Macbeth Onstage: An Annotated Facsimile of Glen Byam Shaw's 1955 Promptbook, edited by Michael Mullin, copyright 1976 by University of Missouri Press.

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Shakespeare: Macbeth -
Freud on the Macbeths

From Some Character-types Met With In Psycho-analytical Work (1916),
by Sigmund Freud

Analytic work has no difficulty in showing us that it is forces of conscience which forbid the subject to gain the long-hoped-for advantage from the fortunate change in reality. It is a difficult task, however, to discover the essence and origin of these judging and punishing trends, which so often surprise us by their existence where we do not expect to find them. For the usual reasons I shall not discuss what we know or conjecture on the point in relation to cases of clinical observation, but in relation to figures which great writers have created from the wealth of their knowledge of the mind.

We may take as an example of a person who collapses on reaching success, after striving for it with single-minded energy, the figure of Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth. Beforehand there is no hesitation, no sign of any internal conflict in her, no endeavour but that of overcoming the scruples of her ambitious and yet tender-minded husband. She is ready to sacrifice even her womanliness to her murderous intention, without reflecting on the decisive part which this womanliness must play when the question afterwards arises of preserving the aim of her ambition, which has been attained through a crime.

Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thought, unsex me here
... Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers! (I v 41)

... I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe below that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this. (I vii 54)

One solitary faint stirring of reluctance comes over her before the deed:

... Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I had done it ... (II ii 14)

Then, when she has become Queen through the murder of Duncan, she betrays for a moment something like disappointment, something like disillusionment. We cannot tell why.

... Nought's had, all's spent,
Where our desire is got without content:
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy,
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy. (III ii 4)

Nevertheless, she holds out. In the banqueting scene which follows on these words, she alone keeps her head, cloaks her husband's state of confusion and finds a pretext for dismissing the guests. And then she disappears from view. We next see her in the sleep-walking scene in the last Act, fixated to the impressions of the night of the murder. Once again, as then, she seeks to put heart into her husband:

Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? (V I 40)

She hears the knocking at the door, which terrified her husband after the deed. But at the same time she strives to "undo the deed which cannot be undone". She washes her hands, which are blood-stained and smell of blood, and is conscious of the futility of the attempt. She who had seemed so remorseless seems to have been borne down by remorse. When she dies, Macbeth, who meanwhile has become as inexorable as she had been in the beginning, can only find a brief epitaph for her:

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word. (V v 17)

And now we ask ourselves what it was that broke this character which had seemed forged from the toughest metal? Is it only disillusionment -- the different aspect shown by the accomplished deed [Endnote 1] -- and are we to infer that even in Lady Macbeth an originally gentle and womanly nature had been worked up to a concentration and high tension which could not endure for long, or ought we to seek for signs of a deeper motivation which will make this collapse more humanly intelligible to us?

It seems to me impossible to come to any decision. Shakespeare's Macbeth is a piéce d'occasion, written for the accession of James, who had hitherto been King of Scotland. The plot was ready-made, and had been handled by other contemporary writers, whose work Shakespeare probably made use of in his customary manner. It offered remarkable analogies to the actual situation. The "virginal" Elizabeth, of whom it was rumoured that she had never been capable of child-bearing and who had once described herself as "a barren stock" [Endnote 2] in an anguished outcry at the news of James's birth, was obliged by this very childlessness of hers to make the Scottish king her successor. And he was the son of the Mary Stuart whose execution she, even though reluctantly, had ordered, and who, in spite of the clouding of their relations by political concerns, was nevertheless of her blood and might be called her guest.

The accession of James I was like a demonstration of the curse of unfruitfulness and the blessings of continuous generation. And the action of Shakespeare's Macbeth is based on this same contrast. [Endnote 3]

The Weird Sisters assured Macbeth that he himself should be king, but to Banquo they promised that his children should succeed to the crown. Macbeth is incensed by this decree of destiny. He is not content with the satisfaction of his own ambition. He wants to found a dynasty -- not to have murdered for the benefit of strangers. This point is overlooked if Shakespeare's play is regarded only as a tragedy of ambition. It is clear that Macbeth cannot live for ever, and thus there is but one way for him to invalidate the part of the prophecy which opposes him -- namely, to have children himself who can succeed him. And he seems to expect them from his indomitable wife:

Bring forth men-children only!
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males ... (I vii 72)

And equally it is clear that if he is deceived in this expectation he must submit to destiny; otherwise his actions lose all purpose and are transformed into the blind fury of one doomed to destruction, who is resolved to destroy beforehand all that he can reach. We watch Macbeth pass through this development, and at the height of the tragedy we hear Macduff's shattering cry, which has so often been recognized to be ambiguous and which may perhaps contain the key to the change in Macbeth:

He has no children! (IV iii 216)

There is no doubt that this means: "Only because he is himself childless could he murder my children." But more may be implied in it, and above all it may lay bare the deepest motive which not only forces Macbeth to go far beyond his own nature, but also touches the hard character of his wife at its only weak point. If one surveys the whole play from the summit marked by these words of Macduff's, one sees that it is sown with references to the father-children relation. The murder of the kindly Duncan is little else than parricide; in Banquo's case, Macbeth kills the father while the son escapes him; and in Macduff's, he kills the children because the father has fled from him. A bloody child, and then a crowned one, are shown him by the witches in the apparition scene; the armed head which is seen earlier is no doubt Macbeth himself. But in the background rises the sinister form of the avenger, Macduff, who is himself an exception to the laws of generation, since he was not born of his mother but ripp'd from her womb.

It would be a perfect example of poetic justice in the manner of talion if the childlessness of Macbeth and the barrenness of his Lady were the punishment for their crimes against the sanctity of generation -- if Macbeth could not become a father because he had robbed children of their father and a father of his children, and if Lady Macbeth suffered the unsexing she had demanded of the spirits of murder. I believe Lady Macbeth's illness, the transformation of her callousness into penitence, could be explained directly as a reaction to her childlessness, by which she is convinced of her impotence against the decrees of nature, and at the same time reminded that it is through her own fault if her crime has been robbed of the better part of its fruits.

In Holinshed's Chronicle (1577), from which Shakespeare took the plot of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is only once mentioned as the ambitious wife who instigates her husband to murder in order that she may herself become queen. There is no mention of her subsequent fate and of the development of her character. On the other hand, it would seem that the change of Macbeth's character into a bloodthirsty tyrant is ascribed to the same motives as we have suggested here. For in Holinshed ten years pass between the murder of Duncan, through which Macbeth becomes king, and his further misdeeds; and in these ten years he is shown as a stern but just ruler. It is not until after this lapse of time that the change begins in him, under the influence of the tormenting fear that the prophecy to Banquo may be fulfilled just as the prophecy of his own destiny has been. Only then does he contrive the murder of Banquo, and, as in Shakespeare, is driven from one crime to another. It is not expressly stated in Holinshed that it was his childlessness which urged him to these courses, but enough time and room is given for that plausible motive. Not so in Shakespeare. Events crowd upon us in the tragedy with breathless haste so that, to judge by the statements made by the characters in it, the course of its action covers about one week. This acceleration takes the ground from under all our constructions of the motives for the change in the characters of Macbeth and his wife. There is no time for a long-drawn-out disappointment of their hopes of offspring to break the woman down and drive the man to defiant rage; and the contradiction remains that though so many subtle interrelations in the plot, and between it and its occasion, point to a common origin of them in the theme of childlessness, nevertheless the economy of time in the tragedy expressly precludes a development of character from any motives but those inherent in the action itself.

What, however, these motives can have been which in so short a space of time could turn the hesitating, ambitious man into an unbridled tyrant, and his steely-hearted instigator into a sick woman gnawed by remorse, it is, in my view, impossible to guess. We must, I think, give up any hope of penetrating the triple layer of obscurity into which the bad preservation of the text, the unknown intention of the dramatist, and the hidden purport of the legend have become condensed. But I should not subscribe to the objection that investigations like these are idle in face of the powerful effect which the tragedy has upon the spectator. The dramatist can indeed, during the representation, overwhelm us by his art and paralyse our powers of reflection; but he cannot prevent us from attempting subsequently to grasp its effect by studying its psychological mechanism. Nor does the contention that a dramatist is at liberty to shorten at will the natural chronology of the events he brings before us, if by the sacrifice of common probability he can enhance the dramatic effect, seem to me relevant in this instance. For such a sacrifice is justified only when it merely interferes with probability [Endnote 4] not when it breaks the causal connection; moreover, the dramatic effect would hardly have suffered if the passage of time had been left interdeterminate, instead of being expressly limited to a few days.

One is so unwilling to dismiss a problem like that of Macbeth as insoluble that I will venture to bring up a fresh point, which may offer another way out of the difficulty. Ludwig Jekels, in a recent Shakespearean study, thinks [Endnote 5] he has discovered a particular technique of the poet's, and this might apply to Macbeth. He believes that Shakespeare often splits a character up into two personages, which, taken separately, are not completely understandable and do not become so until they are brought together once more into a unity. This might be so with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. In that case it would of course be pointless to regard her as an independent character and seek to discover the motives for her change, without considering the Macbeth who completes her. I shall not follow this clue any further, but I should, nevertheless, like to point out something which strikingly confirms this view: the germs of fear which break out in Macbeth on the night of the murder do not develop further in him but in her. It is he who has the hallucination of the dagger before the crime; but it is she who afterwards falls ill of a mental disorder. It is he who after the murder hears the cry in the house: "Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep ..." and so "Macbeth shall sleep no more"; but we never hear that he slept no more, while the Queen, as we see, rises from her bed and, talking in her sleep, betrays her guilt. It is he who stands helpless with bloody hands, lamenting that "all great Neptune's ocean" will not wash them clean, while she comforts him: "A little water clears us of this deed"; but later it is she who washes her hands for a quarter of an hour and cannot get rid of the bloodstains: "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." Thus what he feared in his pangs of conscience is fulfilled in her; she becomes all remorse and he all defiance. Together they exhaust the possibilities of reaction to the crime, like two disunited parts of a single psychical individuality, and it may be that they are both copied from the same prototype.

Endnotes

1 ) An allusion to a line in Schiller's Die Braut von Messina, III v. Strachey and Tyson (eds.).

2) Cf. Macbeth, Act III, sc. I:
Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown,
And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,
Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding ...

3) As is Richard III's wooing of Anne beside the bier of the King whom he has murdered.

4) Freud had already suggested this in the first edition of The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Standard Edition, IV 266. Strachey and Tyson (eds.).

5) This does not appear to have been published. In a later paper on Macbeth Jekels (1917) barely refers to this theory, apart from quoting the present paragraph. In a still later paper, on The Psychology of Comedy, Jekels (1926) returns to the subject, but again very briefly. Strachey and Tyson (eds.).

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Enjoying "Macbeth", by William Shakespeare
by Ed Friedlander, M.D.
erf@kcumb.edu

Warning: Macbeth is supposed to upset people. It shows life at its most brutal and cynical, in order to ask life's toughest question. This page deals with all this without apology. I have a high regard for truth and I talk plain. If you want something nice, please leave now.

Please note: I am the author of all the material on this page. My work has been used without my permission or acknowledgement by around a dozen other people (Google search September 26, 2009), including several sites offering it for sale. This one is the original site.

If you are a student assigned to read or see Macbeth, or an adult approaching it for the first time, you are in for a lot of fun.

Everybody brings a different set of experiences to a book, a theater, or a classroom. Although I've tried to help, ultimately you'll need to decide for yourself about Shakespeare and Macbeth.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

This Is NOT "Family Entertainment."

Young people who know of Shakespeare from "Shakespeare Gardens" and "Beautiful Tales for Children" may be surprised by what happens in Macbeth.

When we first hear of Macbeth, he has just cut an enemy open ("unseamed") from belly button ("nave") to throat ("chops"). The king shouts "Oh valiant cousin! Worthy gentleman!"
At their party, a witch shows her friends the chopped-off thumb of a ship's pilot wrecked on his way home. A witch who's angry with a lady who was munching chestnuts and wouldn't share them plans to get back at her by causing a nine-day storm to make her sailor husband miserable. If the ship hadn't been under divine protection, she'd kill everybody on board. Another witch offers to help with a bit of magical wind. The angry witch appreciates this and says, "You're such a nice person."
Lady Macbeth, soliloquizing, prays to devils to possess her mind, turn the milk in her breasts into bile (!), and give her a man's ability to do evil.
Lady Macbeth b-tches at her husband and ridicules his masculinity in order to make him commit murder. She talks about a smiling baby she once nursed and what it would have been like to smash its brains out -- she would prefer this to having a husband who is unwilling to kill in cold blood. Read the passage again and think about exactly what Lady Macbeth is saying.
Lady Macbeth keeps a strong sedative in the house. She doesn't mention this to her husband even when they are planning a murder. She just uses it. Attentive readers will suspect she has had to use on Macbeth in the past.
The Macbeths murder a sleeping man, their benefactor and guest, in cold blood, then launder their bloody clothes. They smear blood on the drugged guards, then slaughter them to complete the frame-up.
Horses go insane and devour each others' meat while they are still alive.
Everybody knows Macbeth murdered Duncan, but they make him king anyway. Virtuous-talking Banquo ("Let's have a thorough investigation sometime") acquiesces to murder, confirming what every teen knows about adult hypocrisy. (In Holinshed, Banquo is Macbeth's accomplice. Since Banquo was supposed to be the ancestor of Shakespeare's own king James I, this wouldn't really do.) Lennox plays both sides, and probably others do as well. Ross may have left Macduff's castle to "maintain plausible deniability" just before the arrival of assassins who he may have brought.
Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost with twenty skull injuries, any one of which could be fatal. He goes psychiatric and screams "You can't prove I did it." He goes on about how he used to think that once somebody's brains were out, he'd stay dead. But now he'll need to keep people unburied until the crows eat the corpse like roadkill, etc., etc.
Witches deliver incantations ("Double, double, toil and trouble... bubble etc.") that can stand alongside any meaningless-inferential heavy-metal rock lyrics.
Among the ingredients of a witches' brew are cut-off human lips and a baby's finger. It's not just any baby -- it was a child delivered by a prostitute in a ditch, and that she strangled right afterwards. (This kind of thing happens in our era, too. No one knows how often.)
I'm an autopsy pathologist. I am very familiar with how human bodies decompose. To show Macbeth his future, the witches add to the brew "grease that's sweated from the murderer's gibbet." Would you like to know what that means? The bodies of executed murderers were left hanging on the gallows / gibbet, often caged so their friends couldn't take them away, until they were skeletonized, a process that takes weeks. At about ten days in suitable weather, there are enough weak points in the skin that the bodyfat, which has liquefied, can start dripping through. There will be a puddle of oil underneath the body. This is for real.
Macduff's precocious little son jokes with his mother about how there are more bad than good people in the world, and adds some wisecracks at the expense of her own possible morals. Moments later, the bad guys break in and stab him to death.
"Who would have thought the old man would have so much blood in him?" Lady Macbeth goes psychiatric (definitely) and commits suicide (maybe). Hearing of this, Macbeth just says "She should have died hereafter", meaning "She should have picked a different time to die." He then launches into English literature's most famous statement of the meaninglessness of life. He considers suicide, which the Romans considered the dignified thing to do under such circumstances. But he decides it would be more satisfying to take as many people as possible with him. For the word "juggling", see I Henry VI 5.iv.
Macduff recounts how he was cut out of his mother's uterus at the moment of her death. In a world without anesthesia or safe surgery (i.e., both Macbeth's and Shakespeare's), if a woman was unable to deliver a child due to its being too large to pass through the birth canal, both she and the child would die unless a "cesarean section" was performed. The mother's abdomen and uterus were cut open and the child removed. It also had to be done before the mother went into severe shock, so she would be fully conscious when it while it was being done. Of course she would die soon afterwards. Shakespeare's audience knew this.
Macbeth's head ends up on a stick. All teens know that severed heads were probably the first soccer balls. If you are directing the play, this is a nice touch.

The Real Macbeth and His Times

Shakespeare got his story from Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles. You'll need to decide for yourself whether Shakespeare himself knew the story was already fictionalized; Shakespeare's altered it again to clear Banquo, King James's legendary ancestor, of complicity in the murder. It's a fun read. Click here or here to read Holinshed. Holinshed spends a lot of time on the incident in which Malcolm (who became a popular king) tests Macduff by pretending to be mean when he is really nice. Holinshed talks about the murder of King Duff by Donwald in the century before Macbeth. According to Holinshed, Donwald was nagged by his wife until he did the evil deed, and drugged the guards. Shakespeare adapted this for Macbeth.

I've read that Holinshed's section on Macbeth was largely derived from the work of one Hector Boece, Scotorum Historiae ("Chronicles of Scotland", 1526-7, translated from Latin into English by a John Bellenden in 1535).

It is evidently not online. I've also read that Boece's sources include the Chronica gentis Scotorum ("Scotichronicon") by John of Fordun in the early 1500's (he also writes about William "Braveheart" Wallace and Robin Hood), and Andrew of Wyntoun (1400's). John of Fordun seems to have been the first to record the story of the dialogue on kingship between Macduff and Malcolm. You may be able to find this book in an old university library, but I could not find it online. By the time the story of Macbeth had reached Holinshed, it was already mostly fiction.

Here's what we think really happened with Macbeth and the other characters.

In a barbaric era, population pressures made war and even the slaughter of one community by another a fact of life. Survival depended in having a capable warlord to protect life and property, prevent infighting, and protect from distant enemies. Groups of warlords would unite under the nominal leadership of one king to promote their common interests and war on more distant nations. While people pretended to believe in "the divine right of kings" and "lawful succession", continuing effective leadership was assured by warlords killing off the less capable family members.

The name "Macbeth" means "son of life", and is a Christian name rather than a patronymic (hence the "b" is lower case.) Macbeth would have signed his friends' high school yearbooks "Macbeth mac Findlaech" (McFinley). There are MacBeth families in Scotland and Nova Scotia.

Macbeth's father Findlaech was ruler ("mormaer", high steward) of Moray, at the northern tip of Scotland. Macbeth's mother's name is unknown, but she is variously said to have been the daughter of King Kenneth II or the daughter of King Malcolm II. In 1020, Findlaech was killed and succeeded by his nephew Gillacomgain. In 1032, Gillacomgain and fifty other people were burned to death in retribution for the murder of Findlaech, probably by Macbeth and allies.

The historical Mrs. Macbeth was not named "Lady", but "Gruoch" (GROO-och). She was the daughter of a man named Biote (Beoedhe), who was in turn the son of King Kenneth III "the Grim" who Malcolm II had killed to become king. (Some say that Biote was the son of Kenneth II instead.) She was originally married to Gillacomgain. Their son was Lulach the Simple (i.e., stupid; no, Lady Macbeth didn't brain him.) After Macbeth killed Gillacomgain, he took his widow Gruoch for his own wife, and raised Lulach as their stepson. What a guy!

Centuries before Macbeth, King Kenneth MacAlpin, "founded Scotland" by uniting the Picts and the Scots, i.e., getting them to fight foreigners rather than each other. In this era, Gaelic custom required that the succession go via the male line, and that if an heir was not yet old enough to reign when the king died, the kingship went to whatever male adult was next in line. Since the succession was designed to ensure some stability in a world of warlords and infighting, this made sense. Kenneth MacAlpin's male line continued to King Malcolm II, who had at least two daughters but no sons, and he killed the last member of the male McAlpin line. One daughter, Bethoc, (Holinshed calls her Beatrice) married Abbanath Crinen, the secular hereditary abbot of Dunkeld, and gave birth to Duncan.

In 1034, Malcolm II was murdered at Glamis by his fellow warlords, possibly including his grandson Duncan. Then Duncan managed to kill his rivals and seize the throne. Duncan married Sibylla Bearsson and they had Malcolm and Donald "Bain".

Macbeth allied with Thorfinn of Orkney, a Norseman. Thorfinn was the son of Sigurd the Fat and Bethoc, apparently the same Bethoc who was Duncan I's father. Thorfinn Sigurdsson is variously called "Thorfinn I", "Thorfinn II", "Thorfinn Skull-Smasher", "Thorfinn the Black", and "Thorfinn Raven-Feeder" (ravens eat dead meat, including human corpses). Thorfinn and Macbeth defeated and killed Duncan I in a battle in Elgin in August 1040. Thorfinn ruled northern Scotland, and Macbeth ruled southern Scotland. According to accounts, Macbeth was a good king, strict but fair, for the first decade of his reign.

In 1054, Earl Siward of Northumberland, who spirited Malcolm to England after Duncan's death, invaded Scotland. According to the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, he met and defeated Macbeth at the battle of Birnam Wood / Dunsinane (July 27). Most of Macbeth's army were killed, but Macbeth escaped. Siward's son and nephew were also killed. According to the Chronicles of Ulster, Macbeth continued to reign and was actually killed three years later by Duncan's son Malcolm. Thorfinn II survived until 1064.

After Macbeth's death, Lulach claimed the kingship and had some supporters. Lulach was ambushed and killed a few months later by Malcolm.

Malcolm went on to reign as Malcolm III "Canmore" ("big head" or "great ruler"). He took Thorfinn's widow Ingibiorg for himself, and they had a son Duncan, who later ruled as Duncan II. After Ingibiorg died, Malcolm Canmore married Margaret, a princess of the old English royal family. Margaret was a woman of great personal piety, and is now honored as a saint by Roman Catholics and Anglicans. Three of their sons became kings in their turns.

Malcolm Canmore was an aggressive and successful warrior who invaded England several times. He was finally killed in Northumberland. The story is that a treacherous soldier, pretending to hand him a key on a spear, put the spear through his eye socket.

Donald Bane, was king twice (deposed for a time by Duncan II, who he later defeated and killed). Donald Bane was finally defeated, imprisoned, and blinded by King Edgar, one of the sons of Malcolm Canmore and Margaret.

Boece, from a Roman Catholic source

Banquo and Fleance Never Existed

Banquo (Banquho, "Thane of Lochabar") and Fleance are supposed to be the ancestors of the Stewarts (Stuarts), including some kings of Scotland and later Scotland-and-England. After Banquo's murder by Macbeth's assassins, Fleance fled to North Wales, and married one Nesta / Mary, daughter of Gryffudth ap Llewellyn, Prince of Wales. Walter the Steward, first "High Steward of Scotland" and the historical founder of the Stewart line, was supposedly their son.

This is all bunk. Walter's real name was "Walter Fitz Alan Dapifer", son of Alan Dapifer, the sheriff of Shropshire. The sheriff was the son of some ordinary folks.

For some reason, perhaps to give his own Stuart king some more glamorous ancestors, Boece made up Banquo and Fleance. Check out the old Scottish genealogies online. You'll find nobody matching their descriptions.

Joe Cochoit explains how we know Banquo and Fleance are fictitious.

History of Macbeth

Mr. Jensen explains explains how the riddle was solved, and the true ancestry of the Stuarts became clear. As usual, the truth is far more interesting than fiction.

According to Holinshed, Macbeth's parents were Sinel, Thane of Glamis (whose existence is otherwise unattested) and a daughter of Malcolm II named Doada (again, modern genealogies mention no such person.)

Some Story Details

Lady Macbeth's lie 'What, in our house?' would have given the game away to even the stupidest detective, but somehow no-one picks up on it.

-- Chao Mugger

If you're here, you already know the plot of Macbeth, or can find it from the links. Here are some things to notice.

The three witches remind English teachers of the three Fates of Greek mythology and the three Norns of Norse mythology. "Weird" (as in "weird sisters") used to mean "destiny" or "fate". Perhaps in an older version they were.

At the beginning, Duncan I is not leading his army. This is a good way for a king to get himself replaced quickly.

A blood-drenched captain reports that Macbeth and Banquo have just defeated the rebellious Macdonwald (MacDonald, E-I-E-I-O). Ross and Angus then enter and announce that "Bellona's bridegroom, lapped in proof" has defeated the Thane of Cawdor and the Norwegians at Fife. Holinshed credits Macbeth with both of these victories, but let's think. Macbeth cannot have fought two battles 500 miles apart at the same time, and in the next scene he knows nothing of the Thane of Cawdor's disloyalty. Macduff is thane of Fife? If "lapped in proof" is a mistake for "brave Macduff" or "Lord Macduff", then the whole scene makes more sense, and Shakespeare introduces the conflict between the two men early. Duncan gives Cawdor's title and property to Macbeth.

Malcolm was not yet of age, and Duncan's declaring him heir was an impediment to Macbeth's claim on the throne via his mother. Holinshed points this out.

Nothing is what it seems. This begins with Macbeth's beautiful castle and gracious hostess. When Duncan talks about the nice air and the nice birds at Macbeth's castle, Banquo -- very much the butt-kisser -- immediately agrees in a way that will make the king think that Banquo thinks that the king is a good observer of nature.

You'll have to decide for yourself whether Macbeth begins the play as a "nice guy." Unlike Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear, no one seems to genuinely admire or love him except as a warlord. Lady Macbeth famously says he is full of the milk of human kindness, which she dislikes. In considering the murder, Macbeth seems most worried about the dangers and disadvantages to himself. You may enjoy listing these. ("Maybe destiny will make me king without murdering anyone." "It would be more fun to enjoy my current success and popularity for a while." "I'll go to hell." "Duncan is a good man and people won't like his killer." "I might get caught red-handed." "Somebody will assassinate me in turn.") Do you think he's also considering that his what he's doing is wrong? Different people will reach different conclusions.

Notice that on the morning of the day Banquo gets murdered, Macbeth asks him three times where he is going and whether his son will be with him. Banquo should have been more suspicious.

My cyberfriend Kyle Reynolds wrote to remind me that most (all?) of the actual murders occur off-stage, since without any between-act curtains, the story had to be written so that somebody would remove a dead body from the stage. Thanks.

People suspect Malcolm and Donalbain because they ran away. No white Bronco though.

-- Rodger Burnich (link is now down)

The Background

Around 1950, scholars noticed and argued the obvious. Macbeth was written specifically to be performed for, and to please, King James I.

James Stuart was already King James VI of Scotland when Queen Elizabeth's death made him James I of England as well. In the late 1500's, Scotland had a witch craze, with many people convicted of wicked secret practices without physical evidence. James I, who believed the witch hysteria, wrote a book about the supposed hidden world of wicked witches, entitled Demonology.

The witch persecutions were a monument to human stupidity. James may have really believed that there was a secretive sect devoted to malicious evil. Or he may have been just another cynical politician trying to unite people against a common imagined enemy with different cultural practices. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle. Whatever indigenous/pagan beliefs and practices may really have existed in Macbeth's Scotland, the "witches" of the play are obviously there for their role in Macbeth's fictionalized story.

Stephen Greenblatt's "Will in the World" (highly recommended, a book about Shakespeare's times and how he must have been influenced by contemporary events) explains some puzzling features of our play.

Henry Garnet, a Jesuit and priest who was implicated in the Gunpowder Plot, wrote A Treatise of Equivocation about how to mislead and answer ambiguously under oath. He was executed. He may be the "equivocator that could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven."
A Matthew Gwynn held a pageant to greet James I, in which three boy-actors played Sibyls and prophecied his future greatness and mentioned Banquo.
James supposedly told John Harrington that before the execution of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, there was an apparition of "a bloody head dancing in the air".
An accused witch named Agnes Thompson, who had been tortured, told James and his court that on Halloween of 1590, two hundred witches had sailed into the town in sieves.
In his book on witches, James wrote that they would give deceptive and double-meaning prophecies.

Macbeth deals with the fictional ancestors of the Stuart line (Banquo, Fleance) and presents Banquo more favorably than did the play's sources. (In Holinshed, Banquo is Macbeth's active accomplice.) The procession of kings ends with a mirror (probably held by Banquo rather than another king, as in some notes.) James could see himself, thus becoming part of the action. Macbeth says he sees more kings afterwards. Shakespeare has turned the nature spirits of his sources into witches for the witch-hunting king's enjoyment.

Evil? Predestination?

You may be asked, "What is the nature of evil in "Macbeth"? Again, you'll need to decide for yourself.

Shakespeare only uses the word "evil(s)" in the England scene, and only uses it to refer to bad deeds and bad character traits. (The "King's Evil" for which Edward touches people was scrofula, a mycobacterial infection of the cervical lymph nodes.)

Some people will decide that the Macbeths are victims of supernatural forces beyond anybody's control. Other people will decide that the talk about predestination simply reflects the folk-tale, or that the Macbeths' era and/or their outlook on life guarantee that something really bad will happen to them.

Perhaps despite the supernatural trappings of witches and talk about devils, "evil" for Shakespeare is nothing more or less than bad human habits and behaviors.

Are You a Man?

As you go through the play, look for the repeated theme of "What is a real man?" Like nowadays, there is no consensus.

Lady Macbeth, misogynist, wants to lose her femininity so she can be cold-blooded and commit murder like a man does.
Macbeth, having second thoughts, tells his wife that it's unmanly to murder your benefactor while he is asleep. Lady Macbeth gets abusive and tells him this will make him more of a man.
Macbeth flatters his wife, saying she has such "undaunted mettle" that she won't have any baby girls, only baby boys.
Macbeth, perhaps having learned from his wife, gets two men to commit his murder by insulting their masculinity.
Malcolm tells Macduff to bear his sorrow like a man. Macduff replies he must also feel it like a man.
Siward's son becomes a man in his father's eyes the day he falls in battle

There are others. You can get a good paper out of this.

Who Was the Third Murderer?

People have had lots of fun trying to figure out who the Third Murderer really is. It's evidently somebody who knows Banquo and Fleance. The usual suspects include Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, or a servant or thane. All these people are supposed to show up momentarily at Macbeth's dinner party, without bloodstains.

My ingenious cyberfriend Tanner Campbell suggested it is one of the witches. She can blow out a torch by supernatural means, and their participation could assure the survival of Fleance and thus the success of her prophecy.

Shakespeare actually needed to set the scene for a murder. He does not have a modern filmmaker's repertoire. (Macbeth's mutterings would be today's voice-overs.) So to set the scene, he had to use dialogue.

Macbeth pays spies in each of his warlords' castles, so he has other people available. It seems reasonable that he would send somebody knowledgeable to help two disenfranchised persons (not professional hit men) kill a mighty warrior and his teenaged son. It is also unlikely that he would want to introduce the assassins to each other ahead of time.

The Third Murderer does not come back with the others to collect his fee, because he was probably played by one of the minor actors who were party guests and would need to be changing costume.

In other words, you will have to decide for yourself!

Is Macbeth bad luck?

Producing Macbeth is supposed to be unlucky. Fires, falls, and weapon injuries have plagued past productions. Superstition requires those involved in productions not to say the play's title, but rather "The Scottish Play". There are silly urban legends about the boy actor who first played Lady Macbeth getting sick and Shakespeare having to fill in, and Queen Anne closing the theaters after people thought the deviltry of the play had caused a bad storm. Some people think that the play's vision of evil, with witches, demonic familiars, and so forth explains the bad luck. You will have to decide for yourself.

The Curse by Ivanov is now down. It dealt with theatrical superstitions. The accidents are more common because the stage is dark, there's fire scenes, the fog machine makes the stage slippery, there's more wielding of crude weapons by more people, and so forth. Link is now down.

A correspondent in 2002 reminded me that failing acting companies would produce "Macbeth", which was very popular, as a last-ditch, not-always-successful way of staying in business.

A correspondent in 2003 told me that saying the name of the play was bad luck but that people avert this by a prayer/apology to the "Muse of the Theater", i.e., Melpomene (mell-POMM-eh-neh or --eeny; portfolio is tragedy, Thalia is comedy). "Did the Greeks really believe in their mythology?" Who knows? If you would like a different counterspell, let me suggest this. Those wishing to participate join hands in a circle, and one member says, "May those who work on this production, and those who see it, be guided to choose peace over violence, love over vanity, and hope over despair." All say, "Amen."

A Rooted Sorrow

Previous stage villains, notably Shakespeare's Aaron and Richard III, do not reach the Macbeths' depth. Aaron gloats on his misbehavior, and Richard acts the villain until the end. Your instructor may talk about Macbeth beginning as a good and fine man, possessing the tragic flaw of ambition, upsetting the divinely-ordained natural order, and so forth. You'll need to decide for yourself about this. On the one hand, the other characters talk about Duncan as being "meek", very likable and kindly, and so forth. And people do seem to be dismayed over the murder. On the other hand, Macbeth seems -- from the play's bloody beginning -- to be one of many thugs in a society in which power is gained and maintained by killing other thugs, and where loyalty is at best provisional. Lady Macbeth doesn't seem to think that there's anything really unusual about the idea of murdering a guest, and she assumes it's occurred to her husband as well. You could get a good paper by arguing one side, or both -- does Shakespeare believe that there is a deep morality underpinning human society, or does he not believe this, or does he let you decide?

Of course, the Macbeths end up miserable. They do not suffer primarily from conscience (which is not much in evidence in any character, though Malcolm at least claims to live clean to test Macduff). They do not suffer from fear of the afterlife (which Lady Macbeth b-tches out of her husband; he talks about giving up his "eternal jewel", i.e., his soul, to the devil simply as an accomplished fact). Their fear of human retribution merely drives them to additional murders.

Shakespeare's insight goes far deeper. So far as I know, this is the first work in English that focuses on the isolation and meaninglessness that result from selfishness and cruelty. By the end, Lady Macbeth dissociates from the horror of what she has become. Shakespeare uses insanity as a metaphor for actually gaining insight in "King Lear" and maybe elsewhere. Lady Macbeth's insanity is really nothing more than her realizing the nature and consequences of the horrible thing she has done. Macbeth verbally abuses and bullies the people who he needs to defend him (and who are abandoning him), while reflecting to himself on the emptiness and futility of it all. Of course, the couple no longer have a relationship, and Macbeth is merely annoyed when she dies.

Kids... this is true to life. Try to live better than the Macbeths did.

What Does It All Mean?

Fair is foul and foul is fair. In Macbeth, things are seldom what they seem, and we often don't know what's really happening. The play is full of ambiguity and double meanings, starting with the prophecies. The day is extremely foul (weather) and extremely fair (MacDonald has been disemboweled.) Banquo is not so happy, yet much happier. Is the dagger a hallucination, or a supernatural phantom? Ask the same question about Banquo's ghost. Does the bell summon Duncan "to heaven or to hell"? One of Duncan's son's called out "Murder!" in his sleep, but the other one laughed, mysteriously pleased at his father's death. Which was which? Liquor "equivocates" with the porter's sexuality. Does Macbeth say "Had I but died an hour...." because he is really sorry (i.e., sad about his moral deterioration and/or realizing he's getting himself into trouble), or just overacting? Does Lady Macbeth really faint? ("Perhaps she is actually a person of more sensitive feelings than she lets on.") Or does she simply pretend to faint to divert attention from her husband's overacting? Who's the third murderer? Is Ross playing both sides? Is Lennox, who overheard Macbeth's plot against Macduff, the messenger who warns her too late? Does Lady Macbeth commit suicide or die of cardiac complications? What is Lady Macbeth writing in her sleepwalking scene? A confession? A suicide note? A last love letter to a neglectful husband? (My correspondent Terilyn J. Moore, who has taught the play for many years in high school and also shared the idea about Lennox and Lady Macduff, tells me that she invites class members to reproduce what Lacy Macbeth might have written.) There's a lot of talk about clothing -- clothes give you an identity and also conceal who you are. These mysteries add to the literal fog on-stage.

Shakespeare chose his subject matter and some plot details to please James I. But as always, his deeper purpose seems to be to show us our own lives and make us think.

The key question that Shakespeare seems to ask is this. Is human society fundamentally amoral, dog-eat-dog? If so, then Macbeth is right, and human life itself is meaningless and tiresome.

Or do the hints of a better life such as King Edward's ministry, Malcolm's clean living, the dignified death of the contrite traitor, and the doctor's prescription for pastoral care, display Shakespeare's Christianity and/or humanism?

It's a dark play. The light of goodness seems still fairly dim. But evil always appeals more to the imagination, while in real life, good is much more fun.

Is the message of Macbeth one of despair, or of hope?

I don't know. You decide.

Citing this page:

To include this page in a bibliography, you may use this format: Friedlander ER (1999) Enjoying "Macbeth" by William Shakespeare Retrieved Dec. 25, 2003 from http://www.pathguy.com/macbeth.htm

For Modern Language Association sticklers, the name of the site itself is "The Pathology Guy" and the Sponsoring Institution or Organization is Ed Friedlander MD.

I'm Ed. I'm an MD, a pathologist in Kansas City, a mainstream Christian. a modernist, a skydiver, an adventure gamer, the world's busiest free internet physician, and a man who still enjoys books and ideas.

Have you a weird sister? An odd brother? -- Richard Armour on Macbeth

I hope you like Macbeth, and that I've been of some help.

Visit my home page
E-mail me
Brown University, Department of English -- my home base, 1969-1973.

Fellow English majors -- Okay, okay, I know the commas are "supposed" to go inside the quotation marks and parentheses. This became standard to protect fragile bits of movable type. My practice lets me know I'm the one who's typed a particular document. And yes, I know it's supposed to be "I talk plainly."

Teens: Stay away from drugs, work yourself extremely hard in class or at your trade, play sports if and only if you like it, and get out of abusive relationships by any means. If the grown-ups who support you are "difficult", say and act like you love them even if you're not sure that you do. It'll help you and them. The best thing anybody can say about you is, "That kid likes to work too hard and isn't taking it easy like other young people." Health and friendship.

Lady Macbeth may or may not have taken her own life. But suicide is almost certainly a bad idea. Among young people who made serious attempts and failed, 99% said a year later that they are glad they failed.

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The Gunpowder Plot

What exactly was the Gunpowder Plot?

The Gunpowder Plot is the name given to the conspiracy to blow up the Houses of Parliament on 5 November 1605, which was discovered the night before. The origins of the plot remain unclear and it is doubtful that the truth will ever be known. Generations of historians accepted it was an attempt to re-establish the Catholic religion. Others, in more recent times, have suspected that the plot was the work of a group of agents-provocateurs, anxious to discredit the Jesuits and reinforce the ascendancy of the Protestant religion.

Who was involved in the Plot?

The plot centred around five conspirators, Robert Catesby, Thomas Winter, Thomas Percy, John Wright and Guy (or Guido) Fawkes, later joined by Robert Keyes, who determined to blow up of the House of Lords in 1605. The detonation was to take place on State Opening day, when the King, Lords and Commons would all be present in the Lords Chamber.

There is no doubt that Fawkes, though remembered wrongly as the principal conspirator, was in fact a minor cog in the wheel. Born in 1570 at York, he was brought up as a Protestant. In 1593, he enlisted as a mercenary in the Spanish Army in the Netherlands - he became a Catholic shortly before that date. He was at the capture of Calais in 1595, where he apparently distinguished himself greatly. He may have been chosen for his skills when it was planned to tunnel under the House, and it was an advantage that, having been abroad for some time, he was not known in London.

How was the Plot discovered?

The plot was discovered, in the official version, through an anonymous letter to Lord Monteagle, a Catholic, warning him not to attend the State Opening. Whether the letter was genuine or a forgery is uncertain. In any event, on the 4th of November an initial search was made of Parliament (initially, it is said by Monteagle and the Lord Chamberlain, Suffolk). The cellar was thoroughly searched at midnight and Fawkes found with the gunpowder. He was then arrested.

What happened to Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators?

All the co-conspirators (except Robert Winter) were killed or arrested by 12 November and taken to the Tower of London. They were probably subjected to extensive torture which formed part of the punishment for treason at the time. Fawkes and the conspirators who remained alive, were tried for high treason in Westminster Hall on 27 January 1606 and all were convicted and sentenced to death. The executions took place on 30th and 31st January (Fawkes was executed on 31st) and included hanging, drawing and quartering. The heads and other portions of the conspirator's bodies were set up at various points around Westminster and London.

How is the Gunpowder Plot remembered?

The fifth of November is variously called 'Firework Night', 'Bonfire Night' or 'Guy Fawkes Day'. An Act of Parliament (3 James I, cap 1) was passed to appoint 5th November in each year as a day of thanksgiving for 'the joyful day of deliverance'. The Act remained in force until 1859. It is still the custom for Britain on, or around, 5th November to let off fireworks and children to make guys - effigies supposedly of Fawkes. Institutions and towns may hold firework displays and bonfire parties, and the same is done, on a smaller scale in back gardens throughout the country. The year 2005 marked the 400th anniversary of the plot with an exhibition The Gunpowder Plot: Parliament and Treason held in Westminster Hall. A dedicated website is also available.

Are the Houses of Parliament still searched before State Opening?

The Houses of Parliament are still searched by the Yeomen of the Guard just before the State Opening (usually held in November since 1928) to ensure no latter-day Fawkes is concealed in the cellars, though this is retained as a picturesque custom rather than a serious anti-terrorist precaution (for which, of course, there are proper means).

Does the cellar where Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament still exist?

No - the cellar was destroyed in the fire of 1834 that devastated the mediaeval Houses of Parliament. The lantern Guy Fawkes carried in 1605 is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

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American writers who have been influenced by existentialism include: Walker Percy, John Updike, Norman Mailer, John Barth, and Arthur Miller.

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than fu tile and hopeless labor.

If one believes Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent of mortals. According to another tradition, however, he was disposed to practice the profession of highwayman. I see no contradiction in this. Opinions differ as to the reasons why he became the futile laborer of the underworld. To begin with, he is accused of a certain levity in regard to the gods. He stole their secrets. Egina, the daughter of Esopus, was carried off by Jupiter. The father was shocked by that disappearance and complained to Sisyphus. He, who knew of the abduction, offered to tell about it on condition that Esopus would give water to the citadel of Corinth. To the celestial thunderbolts he preferred the benediction of water. He was punished for this in the underworld. Homer tells us also that Sisyphus had put Death in chains. Pluto could not endure the sight of h is deserted, silent empire. He dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death from the hands of her conqueror.

It is said that Sisyphus, being near to death, rashly wanted to test his wife's love. He ordered her to cast his unburied body into the middle of the public square. Sisyphus woke up in the underworld. And there, annoyed by an obedience so contrary to human love, he obtained from Pluto permission to return to earth in order to chastise his wife. But when he had seen again the face of this world, enjoyed water and sun, warm stones and the sea, he no longer wanted to go back to the infernal darkness. Recalls, signs of anger, warnings were of no avail. Many years more he lived facing the curve of the gulf, the sparkling sea, and the smiles of earth. A decree of the gods was necessary. Mercury came and seized the impudent man by the collar and, snatching him from his joys, lead him forcibly back to the underworld, where his rock was ready for him.

You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth. Nothing is told us about Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them. As for this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone, to roll it, and push it up a slope a hundred times over; one sees the face screw ed up, the cheek tight against the stone, the shoulder bracing the clay-covered mass, the foot wedging it, the fresh start with arms outstretched, the wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands. At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.

It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.

If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? The workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and the sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy arises in man's heart: this is the rock's victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Oedipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same moment, blind and desperate, he realizes that the only bond linking him to the world is the cool hand of a girl. Then a tremendous remark rings out: "Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well." Sophocles' Oedipus, like Dostoevsky's Kirilov, thus gives the recipe for the absurd victory. Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism.

One does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual of happiness. "What!---by such narrow ways--?" There is but one world, however. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the felling of the absurd springs from happiness. "I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile suffering. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.

All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is a thing Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his efforts will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is, but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

I summarized The Stranger a long time ago, with a remark I admit was highly paradoxical: "In our society any man who does not weep at his mother's funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death." I only meant that the hero of my book is condemmed because he does not play the game. In this respect, he is foreign to the society in which he lives; he wanders, on the fringe, in the suburbs of private, solitary, sensual life. And this is why some readers have been tempted to look upon him as a piece of social wreckage. A much more accurate idea of the character, or, at least one much closer to the author's intentions, will emerge if one asks just how Meursault doesn't play the game. The reply is a simple one; he refuses to lie. To lie is not only to say what isn't true. It is also and above all, to say more than is true, and, as far as the human heart is concerned, to express more than one feels. This is what we all do, every day, to simplify life. He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings, and immediately society feels threatened. He is asked, for example, to say that he regrets his crime, in the approved manner. He replies that what he feels is annoyance rather than real regret. And this shade of meaning condems him.

For me, therefore, Meursault is not a piece of social wreckage, but a poor and naked man enamored of a sun that leaves no shadows. Far from being bereft of all feeling, he is animated by a passion that is deep because it is stubborn, a passion for the absolute and for truth. This truth is still a negative one, the truth of what we are and what we feel, but without it no conquest of ourselves or of the world will ever be possible.

One would therefore not be much mistaken to read The Stranger as the story of a man who, without any heroics, agrees to die for the truth. I also happen to say, again paradoxically, that I had tried to draw in my character the only Christ we deserve. It will be understood, after my explanations, that I said this with no blasphemous intent, and only with the slightly ironic affection an artist has the right to feel for the characters he has created.

Camus and Sartre
The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel that Ended It
Ronald Aronson

Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus first met in June 1943, at the opening of Sartre's play The Flies. When Sartre was standing in the lobby, according to Simone de Beauvoir, "a dark-skinned young man came up and introduced himself: it was Albert Camus." His novel The Stranger, published a year earlier, was a literary sensation, and his philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus had appeared six months previously. The young man from Algiers was marooned in France by the war. While convalescing from an exacerbation of his chronic tuberculosis in Le Panelier, near Chambon, Camus had been cut off from his wife by the Allied conquest of French North Africa and the resulting German invasion of unoccupied France in November 1942. He wanted to meet the increasingly well-known novelist and philosopher—and now playwright—whose fiction he had reviewed years earlier and who had just published a long article on Camus's own books. It was a brief encounter. "I'm Camus," he said. Sartre immediately "found him a most likeable personality."

In November, Camus moved to Paris to start working as a reader for his (and Sartre's) publisher, Gallimard, and their friendship began in earnest. At their first get-together at the Café Flore—where Sartre and Beauvoir worked, kept warm, ate, and socialized—the three started off awkwardly. Then they started talking shop, Camus and Sartre sharing their regard for the surrealist poet Francis Ponge's Le Parti pris des choses. What "led to the ice being broken" between them, according to Beauvoir, was Camus's passion for the theater. Camus had led an amateur political theater troupe in Algiers. "Sartre talked of his new play [No Exit] and the conditions that would govern its production. Then he suggested that Camus should play the lead and stage it. Camus hesitated at first, but when Sartre pressed the point he agreed." They held a few rehearsals in Beauvoir's hotel room for what was to be a low-budget touring production. "The readiness with which Camus flung himself into this venture endeared him to us; it also hinted that he had plentiful time at his disposal. He had only recently come to Paris; he was married, but his wife had stayed behind in North Africa." Sartre was pleased with Camus's work in the role of Garcin, but his financial backer withdrew; this man's wife, who was to be showcased in No Exit, was arrested for suspected Resistance activity. Sartre was then offered the chance to present the play in a professional production on the Paris stage, and Camus obligingly backed out. But the friendship was cemented. "His youth and independence created bonds between us: we were all solitaries, who had developed without the aid of any 'school'; we belonged to no group or clique."

If the friendship seemed so easy at the beginning, one reason was that Sartre and Camus had already gotten to know each other in ways more important than a handshake. Avid readers, each absorbed in shaping his own ideas and styles, the young writers had read each other's books well before they met. Their reviews of each other's early writings are still among the most interesting and enthusiastic commentaries. Although not uncritical, Sartre's and Camus's first responses to each other express the literary and philosophical kinship that underlay their relationship. They also introduce us to one of the most important sites of their interaction for over twenty years—their sometimes direct, sometimes veiled, references to each other. From their first meeting to the last words they exchanged, we will find some of their most vital and charged encounters on paper.

Camus discovered Sartre in October 1938 when he read and reviewed Nausea. The young pied-noir (a Frenchman born in Algeria), was a fledgling reporter and author of a column entitled "The Reading Room" for an Algiers left-wing daily. He had published locally two small books of essays, The Wrong Side and the Right Side and Nuptials, and after abandoning a first novel had begun writing The Stranger. Though only in his mid-twenties, the would-be novelist wrote remarkably self-assured responses in his literary column to the new fiction being published in Paris, including Gide's The Counterfeiters, Nizan's The Conspiracy, Silone's Bread and Wine, Huxley's Those Barren Leaves, Amado's Bahia, and Sartre's Nausea and The Wall.

Camus's review of Nausea was demanding and appreciative. He was no dazzled provincial, light-years from Paris's sophistication, but a peer who deeply shared Sartre's purposes and cheered him on, only to be disappointed by what he saw at this early period as Sartre's ultimate failure. Nausea recounts the breakdown of the reassuring daily life of Antoine Roquentin, who is staying in a western port city and working on a biography of a Revolution-era marquis. Roquentin feels nauseated as he experiences the absurdity normally hidden by his routines, and the truth of that absurdity appears ever more sharply as his life slowly gives way around him. It is a dazzling thought-experiment, containing some marvelous characterizations and descriptions. As Camus had told a friend several months before he wrote the review, he had "thought a lot about" the book, and it was "very close to a part of me." He led off his review by asserting that "a novel is nothing but philosophy expressed in images." In a good novel, however, the philosophy becomes one with the images. Camus gave no indication of knowing that the novelist was also a philosopher who had already published a book on the imagination in 1936 and a long article entitled "The Transcendence of the Ego" the following year. He himself had earned the diplôme d'études supérieures (the equivalent of a master's degree) in philosophy with a thesis on Saint Augustine and Plotinus. Sartre, he insisted, broke the balance between his novel's theories and its life. As a result, its author's "remarkable fictional gifts and the play of the toughest and most lucid mind are at the same time both lavished and squandered." Lavished: each of the book's chapters, taken by itself, "reaches a kind of perfection in bitterness and truth." Daily life in Bouville "is depicted with a sureness of touch whose lucidity leaves no room for hope." And each of Sartre's reflections on time effectively illustrated the thinking of philosophers from Kierkegaard to Heidegger. Squandered: the descriptive and the philosophical aspects of the novel "don't add up to a work of art: the passage from one to the other is too rapid, too unmotivated, to evoke in the reader the deep conviction that makes art of the novel."

Camus went on to praise Sartre's descriptions of absurdity, the sense of anguish that arises as the ordinary structures imposed on existence collapse in Antoine Roquentin's life, and his resulting nausea. Sartre's deft handling of this strange and banal subject moves with a "vigor and certainty" reminiscent of Kafka. But—and here Sartre differs from Kafka—"some indefinable obstacle prevents the reader from participating and holds him back when he is on the very threshold of consent." By this, Camus meant not only the imbalance between ideas and images but also Sartre's negativity. Sartre dwells on the repugnant features of humankind "instead of basing his reasons for despair on certain of man's signs of greatness." And the reviewer was also bothered by the "comic" inadequacy of Roquentin's final attempt to find hope in art, considering how "trivial" art is when compared with some of life's redeeming moments.

Though strongly critical, Camus appreciated Sartre's ideas and enjoyed his honesty and his capacity to break new ground. The review's closing words stress his admiration:

This is the first novel from a writer from whom everything may be expected. So natural a suppleness in staying on the far boundaries of conscious thought, so painful a lucidity, are indications of limitless gifts. These are grounds for welcoming Nausea as the first summons of an original and vigorous mind whose lessons and works to come we are impatient to see.

Was this merely a reviewer's posture, a way of balancing criticism with just enough praise so as to not sound peevish? The impatient critic did not have long to wait. Less than six months later, Sartre's next book fully satisfied him. In February 1939, in reviewing Sartre's collection of stories The Wall, Camus enthusiastically hailed Sartre's lucidity, his portrayal of the absurdity of existence, and his depiction of characters whose freedom was useless to them. Their negativity—if anything, stronger in The Wall than in Nausea—now troubled him less. Overwhelmed by their freedom, these people could not overcome absurdity as they bumped up against their own lives. They had "no attachments, no principles, no Ariadne's thread," because they were unable to act. "From this stems both the immense interest and the absolute mastery of Sartre's stories." The reader does not know what the characters will do from one moment to the next; their author's "art lies in the detail with which he depicts his absurd creatures, the way he observes their monotonous behavior."

Camus confessed to being unable to put these stories down. They gave their reader "that higher, absurd freedom which leads the characters to their own ends." It was a useless freedom, which "explains the often overwhelming emotional impact of these pages as well as their cruel pathos." Sartre described an absurd human condition, but he refused to flinch before it. The philosophy and the images were now in balance. Camus's conclusion indicated not only his enthusiasm for the author but his sense of common purpose with a writer who,

in his two books, has been able to get straight to the essential problem and bring it to life through his obsessive characters. A great writer always introduces his own world and its message. Sartre's brings us to nothingness, but also to lucidity. And the image he perpetuates through his characters, of a man seated amid the ruins of his life, is a good illustration of the greatness and truth of his work.

"Greatness and truth"—"la grandeur et la vérité." Might Sartre have seen this tribute? On his side, all we know for certain is a literary encounter that took place in fall 1942. Discovering Camus only weeks after sending off the completed manuscript of Being and Nothingness, he was moved to devote a generous, detailed, 6,000-word essay to The Stranger. In this striking article, Sartre reads that book alongside The Myth of Sisyphus, the fiction in relation to the philosophy. As he writes, let us listen to the different voices:

The absurd…resides neither in man nor in the world if you consider each separately. But since man's dominant characteristic is "being-in-the-world," the absurd is, in the end, an inseparable part of the human condition. Thus, the absurd is not, to begin with, the object of a mere idea; it is revealed to us in a doleful illumination. "Getting up, tram, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, in the same routine…," and then, suddenly, "the seeing collapses," and we find ourselves in a state of hopeless lucidity.

Here Sartre is approvingly summarizing and quoting from a passage near the beginning of The Myth of Sisyphus, where Camus lays out his basic ideas. Surprisingly, the quoted passage sounds like Camus's paraphrase of none other than Roquentin's experience in Nausea. Sartre continues, in apparent agreement with Camus: "If we are able to refuse the misleading aid of religion or existential philosophies, we then possess certain basic, obvious facts: the world is chaos, a 'divine equivalence born of anarchy'; tomorrow does not exist, since we all die. 'In a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger.'"

Turning directly to the context in The Myth of Sisyphus where this sentence occurs, and reading from this point forward, we are reminded of Nausea: "At any streetcorner the feeling of absurdity can strike a man in the face." And on the next page of The Myth of Sisyphus is the Sartre-like passage about daily routine collapsing, which Sartre quotes in his review. As we turn the page, Sartre's novel is mentioned explicitly: "This nausea, as a writer of today calls it, is also the absurd." Whose voice, then, is heard in the original quotation above? In a stunning reflection of kinship, Sartre enthusiastically quoted Camus—whose analysis drew upon Sartre. It is both of their voices at one and the same time.

Beyond this kinship, Sartre compared Camus with Kafka and Hemingway, whom he admired, and praised The Stranger for its "skillful construction."

There is not a single unnecessary detail, nor one that is not returned to later on, and used in the argument. And when we close the book, we realize that it could not have had any other ending. In this world that has been stripped of its causality and presented as absurd, the smallest incident has weight. There is no single one which does not help to lead the hero to crime and capital punishment. The Stranger is a classical work, an orderly work, composed about the absurd and against the absurd.

The author of Nausea obviously admired the imaginative power of The Stranger. The stark simplicity of Camus's language, his ability to evoke the physical, the unforgettable descriptions of the funeral vigil, the next morning's procession, and Meursault's daily routines combine with more disturbing aspects—Meursault's lack of normal human emotion, his mindless murder of the Arab, the prosecutor's outrage at the young man's indifference toward his mother's death, his own defiance of the jury and its sense of propriety, as well the improbability of a death sentence for a white man who has killed an Arab in Algeria—to create the great novel of French Algeria. But how did the author of Being and Nothingness respond to The Myth of Sisyphus? Having just completed one of the most original and profound philosophical constructions of the twentieth century, Sartre showed respect for the philosophical essayist who, "by virtue of the cool style of The Myth of Sisyphus" as well as its subject, "takes his place in the great tradition of those French moralists" regarded as Nietzsche's forerunners. "The turn of his reasoning, the clarity of his ideas, the cut of his expository style and a certain kind of solar, ceremonious and sad sombreness, all indicate a classic temperament."

Just as Sartre must have noticed that The Stranger came alive as fiction in ways that his own Nausea did not—as Camus had astutely pointed out four years earlier—so also he must have seen that for all its appeal as popular philosophizing The Myth of Sisyphus was the work of a dabbler in philosophy and not a systematic builder of ideas. Camus briefly dismissed existentialists such as Jaspers, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard en route to insisting that nothing could overcome life's absurdity. Sartre, on the other hand, had spent years working through the phenomenology of Heidegger and Husserl until he synthesized them in Being and Nothingness into a work that sought to penetrate the very nature of being. Starting with Cartesian individual consciousness, Sartre carefully described basic structures of existence, fundamental human projects, and characteristic patterns of behavior such as bad faith. By the end of the book he was poised to follow his philosophy's implications, as he did over the next several years, into virtually every aspect of existence—from daily life and politics to ethics, artistic creation, and the nature of knowledge. In The Myth of Sisyphus, on the other hand, starting from the premise that "the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions," Camus stayed on the terrain of experience and its frustrations rather than pursuing "the learned and classical dialectic." Thus both The Myth of Sisyphus and Being and Nothingness began with the absurd and exuded the same zeitgeist; yet they were vastly different.

Just how different is conveyed joltingly in a single, nasty "by the way": "Camus shows off a bit by quoting passages from Jaspers, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard, whom, by the way, he does not always seem to have quite understood." The philosopher, agrégé from the Ecole Normale Supérieure, puts down the philosophizer, diplôme d'études supérieure from the University of Algiers.

Perhaps this is why Camus was not thrilled by Sartre's article. In a letter to his teacher Jean Grenier, who published his own review of The Stranger in the very same issue of Cahiers du Sud, Camus reacted to Sartre on Camus:

Sartre's article is a model of "taking apart." Of course, every creation has an instinctive element which [he] does not envision, and intelligence does not play such an important role. But in criticism this is the rule of the game, which is fine because on several points he enlightened me about what I wanted to do. I also see that most of his criticisms are fair, but why that acid tone?

Acid dissolves, after all, takes things apart. Perhaps the remark about tone means no more than Camus's discomfort at seeing his work being taken apart and explained. Clearly uneasy with being put under Sartre's microscope, Camus defends himself by opposing his instinctive creativity to Sartre's critical acuity, even while conceding that the latter requires more intelligence.

Sartre's put-down may well have been repayment for a slight the reader will have noticed in a passage from The Myth of Sisyphus quoted above: "this nausea, as a writer of today calls it, is also the absurd." Three years earlier Camus had referred to Sartre the author of novels and short stories as a great writer. Now, relying on the ideas of Nausea, and having mentioned Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Jaspers by name, Camus gives his peer only the most oblique mention. The anonymous "writer of today," thereby placed on a lower level than the named great thinkers, in turn demonstrates his own ability not only to analyze and even cuff a young upstart but also to take the opposite tack, devoting considerable space in his article to generously showing how Camus fits into the aristocracy of literature and ideas.

In addition to revealing a potential for prickliness toward each other, these remarks remind us that the two men's kinship was not sameness. In addition to their mutual praise and sense of discovery, these texts suggest many differences between Sartre and Camus. Sartre had a more negative and Camus a more positive view of both nature and human reality. Merely to open The Stranger alongside Nausea is to be struck by the contrast between Meursault/Camus's dazzling physicality and Roquentin/Sartre's famous disgust for the physical. Camus reveled in the sensuous world of North Africa, as in Nuptials, and his reader can hardly ignore its intensity and its pleasures. Sartre's writing never embraced the physical world or the body in the direct, unquestioning, and often joyous way so natural to Camus. Indeed, one of the most striking contrasts in modern fiction, as Camus himself knew, is that between the gray, ugly Bouville—"Mudville"—of Nausea and The Stranger's bright, shimmering port city, its beach, and its surrounding countryside, Le Havre and Algiers.

Their reviews of each other point up another key difference. Although both wrote important works of philosophy and fiction and successfully tackled a number of other genres, by temperament the one was primarily a philosopher, absorbed with theories and general ideas, the other primarily a novelist, most comfortably capturing concrete situations—Camus's distinction between "intelligence" and the "instinctive element." The brilliant young philosopher took absurdity as his starting point and slowly, in the five years between Nausea and Being and Nothingness, explored how human activity constitutes a meaningful world from brute, meaningless existence. The philosophizing novelist built an entire worldview on the sense that absurdity is an unsurpassable given of human experience.

Despite these differences, the two writers' initial admiration for each other sprang from the closeness of their starting points and the similarity of their projects. Each was trying make his mark in fields kept quite distinct in French education and culture. Each one immediately noticed that the other was writing both philosophy and literature. And each immediately saw how much they shared. Their writing, with its unconventional plots and seemingly unmotivated characters, stressed that existence was absurd. They faced this absurdity honestly and lucidly, and they agreed that most people (including philosophers) did not do so. They prized living authentically.

French novelist, essayist and playwright, who received the 1957 Nobel Prize for literature. Camus was closely linked to his fellow existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre in the 1940s, but he broke with him over Sartre's support to Stalinist politics. Camus died at the age of forty-six in a car accident near Sens, France. Among his best-known novels are The Stranger (1942) and The Plague (1947).

"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know. I had a telegram from the home: 'Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.' That doesn't mean anything. It may have happened yesterday." (from The Stranger)

Albert Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria, into a working-class family. Camus's mother, Catherine Hélène Sintés, was an illiterate cleaning woman. She came from a family of Spanish origin. Lucien Auguste Camus, his father, was an itinerant agricultural laborer. He died of his wounds in 1914 after the Battle of the Marne - Camus was less than a year old at that time. His body was never sent to Algeria. During the war, Catherine Hélène worked in a factory. She was partly deaf, due to a stroke that permanently impaired her speech, but she was able to read lips. In their home "things had no names", as Camus later recalled. But he loved his mother intensely: "When my mother's eyes were not resting on me, I have never been able to look at her without tears springing into my eyes."

In 1923 Camus won a scholarship to the lycée in Algiers, where he studied from 1924 to 1932. Incipient tuberculosis put an end to his athletic activities. The disease was to trouble Camus for the rest of his life. Between the years 1935 and 1939 Camus held various jobs in Algiers. He also joined the Communist Party, but his interest in the works of Marx and Engels was rather superficial. More important writers in his circle were André Malraux and André Gide.

In 1936 Camus received his diplôme d'étudies supérieures from the University of Algiers in philosophy. To recover his health he made his first visit to Europe. Camus' first book, L'ENVERS ET L'ENDROIT (1937), was a collection of essays, which he wrote at the age of twenty-two. Camus dedicated it to his philosophy teacher, Jean Grenier. The philosopher Brice Parain maintained that the little book contained Camus' best work, although the author himself considered the form of his writings clumsy.

By this time Camus' reputation in Algeria as a leading writer was growing. He was also active in theater. In 1938 Camus moved to France. Next year he divorced his first wife, Simone Hié, who was a morphine addict. From 1938 to 1940 Camus worked for the Alger-Républicain, reviewing among others Sartre's books, and in 1940 for Paris-Soir. In 1940 he married Francine Faure, a pianist and mathematician.

During WW II Camus was member of the French resistance. From 1943 he worked as a reader and editor of Espoir series at Gallimard publisher. With Sartre he founded the left-wing Resistance newspaper Combat, serving as its editor. His second novel, L'ÉTRANGER (The Stranger), which he had begun in Algeria before the war, appeared in 1942. It has been considered one of the greatest of all hard-boiled novels. Camus admired the American tough novel and wrote in The Rebel (1951) that "it does not choose feelings or passions to give a detailed description of, such as we find in classic French novels. It rejects analysis and the search for a fundamental psychological motive that could explain and recapitulate the behavior of a character..."

The story of The Stranger is narrated by a doomed character, Mersault, and is set between two deaths, his mother's and his own. Mersault is a clerk, who seems to have no feelings and spends afternoons in lovemaking and empty nights in the cinema. Like Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment (1866), he reaches self-knowledge by committing a crime - he shoots an Arab on the beach without explicit reason and motivation - it was hot, the Arab had earlier terrorized him and his friend Raymond, and he had an headache. Mersault is condemned to die as much for his refusal to accept the standards of social behavior as for the crime itself. "The absurd man will not commit suicide; he wants to live, without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future, without hope, without illusions, and without resignation either. He stares at death with passionate attention and this fascination liberates him. He experiences the "divine irresponsibility" of the condemned man." (from Sartre analysis of Mersault, in Literary and Philosophical Essays, 1943)

In the cell Mersault faces the reality for the first time, and his consciousness awakens. "It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe." Luchino Visconti's film version from 1967 meticulously reconstructed an Algiers street so that it looked exactly as it had during 1938-39, when the story takes place. But the 43-year-old Marcello Mastroianni, playing 30-year-old Mesault, was considered too old, although otherwise his performance was praised.

In 1942 also appeared Camus' philosophical essay LE MYTHE DE SISYPHE. It starts with the famous statement: "There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that." Camus compares the absurdity of the existence of humanity to the labours of the mythical character Sisyphus, who was condemned through all eternity to push a boulder to the top of a hill and watch helplessly as it rolled down again. Camus takes the nonexistence of God granted and finds meaning in the struggle itself.

"A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images," Camus wrote. He admired Sartre's gift's as a novelist, but did not find his two sides, philosophy and storytelling, both equally convincing. In an essay written in 1952 he praises Melville's Billy Budd. Melville, according to Camus, "never cut himself off from flesh or nature, which are barely perceptible in Kafka's work." Camus also admired William Faulkner and made a dramatic adaptation of Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun. In 1946 Camus spent some time in New York, and wrote: "I don't have a precise idea about New York myself, even after so many days, but it continues to irritate me and seduce me at the same time."

"It is not rebellion itself which is noble but the demands it makes upon us." (from The Plague, 1947)

In 1947 Camus resigned from Combat and published in the same year his third novel, LA PESTE, an allegory of the Nazi occupation of France. A small town is abruptly forced to live within narrow boundaries under a terror - death is loose on the streets. In the besieged city some people try to act morally, some are cowards, some lovers. "None the less, he knew that the tale he had to tell could be one of a final victory. It could only be the record of what had had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never-ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts, despite their personal afflictions, by all who, while unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to pestilences, strive their utmost to be healers."

Before his break with Sartre Camus wrote L'HOMME RÉVOLTÉ (1951), which explores the theories and forms of humanity's revolt against authority. The book was criticized in Sartre's Temps modernes. Camus was offended and Sartre responded with a scornful letter. From 1955 to 1956 Camus worked as a journalist for L'Express. Among his major works from the late-1950s are LA CHUTE (1956), an ironic novel in which the penitent judge Jean-Baptiste Clamence confesses his own moral crimes to a strager in an Amsterdam bar. Jean-Baptiste reveals his hypocrisy, but at the same time his monologue becomes an attack on modern man.

At the time of his death, Camus was planning to direct a theater company of his own and to write a major novel about growing up in Algeria. Several of the short stories in L'EXILE ET LA ROYAUME (1957) were set in Algeria's coastal towns and inhospitale sands. The unfinished novel LA MORT HEUREUSE (1970) was written in 1936-38. It presented the young Camus, or Patrice Mersault, seeking his happiness from Prague to his hometown in Algiers, announcing towards the end of the book "What matters - all that matters, really - is the will to happiness, a kind of enormous, ever-present consciousness. The rest - women, art, success - is nothing but excuses." In LE PREMIER HOMME (1994), the story of Jacques Cormery, Camus charted the history of his family and his lycée years. The manuscript was found in the car, a Facel Vega, in which he died on January 4, 1960.

The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook

by Marty Smith, Portland OR
forwarded by Alastair Sutherland (kaidan@ix.netcom.com)

from Free Agent March 1987 (a Portland Oregon alternative newspaper), Republished in the Utne Reader Nov./Dec. 1993

We have been lucky to discover several previously lost diaries of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre stuck in between the cushions of our office sofa. These diaries reveal a young Sartre obsessed not with the void, but with food. Apparently Sartre, before discovering philosophy, had hoped to write "a cookbook that will put to rest all notions of flavor forever." The diaries are excerpted here for your perusal.

October 3

Spoke with Camus today about my cookbook. Though he has never actually eaten, he gave me much encouragement. I rushed home immediately to begin work. How excited I am! I have begun my formula for a Denver omelet.

October 4

Still working on the omelet. There have been stumbling blocks. I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like stone. I want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they taste like cheese. I look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. Tried eating them with the lights off. It did not help. Malraux suggested paprika.

October 6

I have realized that the traditional omelet form (eggs and cheese) is bourgeois. Today I tried making one out of cigarette, some coffee, and four tiny stones. I fed it to Malraux, who puked. I am encouraged, but my journey is still long.

October 10

I find myself trying ever more radical interpretations of traditional dishes, in an effort to somehow express the void I feel so acutely. Today I tried this recipe:

Tuna Casserole

Place the casserole dish in a cold oven. Place a chair facing the oven and sit in it forever. Think about how hungry you are. When night falls, do not turn on the light.

While a void is expressed in this recipe, I am struck by its inapplicability to the bourgeois lifestyle. How can the eater recognize that the food denied him is a tuna casserole and not some other dish? I am becoming more and more frustated.

October 25

I have been forced to abandon the project of producing an entire cookbook. Rather, I now seek a single recipe which will, by itself, embody the plight of man in a world ruled by an unfeeling God, as well as providing the eater with at least one ingredient from each of the four basic food groups. To this end, I purchased six hundred pounds of foodstuffs from the corner grocery and locked myself in the kitchen, refusing to admit anyone. After several weeks of work, I produced a recipe calling for two eggs, half a cup of flour, four tons of beef, and a leek. While this is a start, I am afraid I still have much work ahead.

November 15

Today I made a Black Forest cake out of five pounds of cherries and a live beaver, challenging the very definition of the word cake. I was very pleased. Malraux said he admired it greatly, but could not stay for dessert. Still, I feel that this may be my most profound achievement yet, and have resolved to enter it in the Betty Crocker Bake-Off.

November 30

Today was the day of the Bake-Off. Alas, things did not go as I had hoped. During the judging, the beaver became agitated and bit Betty Crocker on the wrist. The beaver's powerful jaws are capable of felling blue spruce in less than ten minutes and proved, needless to say, more than a match for the tender limbs of America's favorite homemaker. I only got third place. Moreover, I am now the subject of a rather nasty lawsuit.

December 1

I have been gaining twenty-five pounds a week for two months, and I am now experiencing light tides. It is stupid to be so fat. My pain and ultimate solitude are still as authentic as they were when I was thin, but seem to impress girls far less. From now on, I will live on cigarettes and black coffee

Existentialism Is a Humanism

Written: Lecture given in 1946
Source: Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufman, Meridian Publishing Company, 1989;
First Published: World Publishing Company in 1956;
Translator: Philip Mairet;
HTML Markup: by Andy Blunden 1998; proofed and corrected February 2005.

My purpose here is to offer a defence of existentialism against several reproaches that have been laid against it.

First, it has been reproached as an invitation to people to dwell in quietism of despair. For if every way to a solution is barred, one would have to regard any action in this world as entirely ineffective, and one would arrive finally at a contemplative philosophy. Moreover, since contemplation is a luxury, this would be only another bourgeois philosophy. This is, especially, the reproach made by the Communists.

From another quarter we are reproached for having underlined all that is ignominious in the human situation, for depicting what is mean, sordid or base to the neglect of certain things that possess charm and beauty and belong to the brighter side of human nature: for example, according to the Catholic critic, Mlle. Mercier, we forget how an infant smiles. Both from this side and from the other we are also reproached for leaving out of account the solidarity of mankind and considering man in isolation. And this, say the Communists, is because we base our doctrine upon pure subjectivity – upon the Cartesian “I think”: which is the moment in which solitary man attains to himself; a position from which it is impossible to regain solidarity with other men who exist outside of the self. The ego cannot reach them through the cogito.

From the Christian side, we are reproached as people who deny the reality and seriousness of human affairs. For since we ignore the commandments of God and all values prescribed as eternal, nothing remains but what is strictly voluntary. Everyone can do what he likes, and will be incapable, from such a point of view, of condemning either the point of view or the action of anyone else.

It is to these various reproaches that I shall endeavour to reply today; that is why I have entitled this brief exposition “Existentialism is a Humanism.” Many may be surprised at the mention of humanism in this connection, but we shall try to see in what sense we understand it. In any case, we can begin by saying that existentialism, in our sense of the word, is a doctrine that does render human life possible; a doctrine, also, which affirms that every truth and every action imply both an environment and a human subjectivity. The essential charge laid against us is, of course, that of over-emphasis upon the evil side of human life. I have lately been told of a lady who, whenever she lets slip a vulgar expression in a moment of nervousness, excuses herself by exclaiming, “I believe I am becoming an existentialist.” So it appears that ugliness is being identified with existentialism. That is why some people say we are “naturalistic,” and if we are, it is strange to see how much we scandalise and horrify them, for no one seems to be much frightened or humiliated nowadays by what is properly called naturalism. Those who can quite well keep down a novel by Zola such as La Terre are sickened as soon as they read an existentialist novel. Those who appeal to the wisdom of the people – which is a sad wisdom – find ours sadder still. And yet, what could be more disillusioned than such sayings as “Charity begins at home” or “Promote a rogue and he’ll sue you for damage, knock him down and he’ll do you homage”? We all know how many common sayings can be quoted to this effect, and they all mean much the same – that you must not oppose the powers that be; that you must not fight against superior force; must not meddle in matters that are above your station. Or that any action not in accordance with some tradition is mere romanticism; or that any undertaking which has not the support of proven experience is foredoomed to frustration; and that since experience has shown men to be invariably inclined to evil, there must be firm rules to restrain them, otherwise we shall have anarchy. It is, however, the people who are forever mouthing these dismal proverbs and, whenever they are told of some more or less repulsive action, say “How like human nature!” – it is these very people, always harping upon realism, who complain that existentialism is too gloomy a view of things. Indeed their excessive protests make me suspect that what is annoying them is not so much our pessimism, but, much more likely, our optimism. For at bottom, what is alarming in the doctrine that I am about to try to explain to you is – is it not? – that it confronts man with a possibility of choice. To verify this, let us review the whole question upon the strictly philosophic level. What, then, is this that we call existentialism?

Most of those who are making use of this word would be highly confused if required to explain its meaning. For since it has become fashionable, people cheerfully declare that this musician or that painter is “existentialist.” A columnist in Clartes signs himself “The Existentialist,” and, indeed, the word is now so loosely applied to so many things that it no longer means anything at all. It would appear that, for the lack of any novel doctrine such as that of surrealism, all those who are eager to join in the latest scandal or movement now seize upon this philosophy in which, however, they can find nothing to their purpose. For in truth this is of all teachings the least scandalous and the most austere: it is intended strictly for technicians and philosophers. All the same, it can easily be defined.

The question is only complicated because there are two kinds of existentialists. There are, on the one hand, the Christians, amongst whom I shall name Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel, both professed Catholics; and on the other the existential atheists, amongst whom we must place Heidegger as well as the French existentialists and myself. What they have in common is simply the fact that they believe that existence comes before essence – or, if you will, that we must begin from the subjective. What exactly do we mean by that?

If one considers an article of manufacture as, for example, a book or a paper-knife – one sees that it has been made by an artisan who had a conception of it; and he has paid attention, equally, to the conception of a paper-knife and to the pre-existent technique of production which is a part of that conception and is, at bottom, a formula. Thus the paper-knife is at the same time an article producible in a certain manner and one which, on the other hand, serves a definite purpose, for one cannot suppose that a man would produce a paper-knife without knowing what it was for. Let us say, then, of the paperknife that its essence – that is to say the sum of the formulae and the qualities which made its production and its definition possible – precedes its existence. The presence of such-and-such a paper-knife or book is thus determined before my eyes. Here, then, we are viewing the world from a technical standpoint, and we can say that production precedes existence.

When we think of God as the creator, we are thinking of him, most of the time, as a supernal artisan. Whatever doctrine we may be considering, whether it be a doctrine like that of Descartes, or of Leibnitz himself, we always imply that the will follows, more or less, from the understanding or at least accompanies it, so that when God creates he knows precisely what he is creating. Thus, the conception of man in the mind of God is comparable to that of the paper-knife in the mind of the artisan: God makes man according to a procedure and a conception, exactly as the artisan manufactures a paper-knife, following a definition and a formula. Thus each individual man is the realisation of a certain conception which dwells in the divine understanding. In the philosophic atheism of the eighteenth century, the notion of God is suppressed, but not, for all that, the idea that essence is prior to existence; something of that idea we still find everywhere, in Diderot, in Voltaire and even in Kant. Man possesses a human nature; that “human nature,” which is the conception of human being, is found in every man; which means that each man is a particular example of a universal conception, the conception of Man. In Kant, this universality goes so far that the wild man of the woods, man in the state of nature and the bourgeois are all contained in the same definition and have the same fundamental qualities. Here again, the essence of man precedes that historic existence which we confront in experience.

Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man or, as Heidegger has it, the human reality. What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism. And this is what people call its “subjectivity,” using the word as a reproach against us. But what do we mean to say by this, but that man is of a greater dignity than a stone or a table? For we mean to say that man primarily exists – that man is, before all else, something which propels itself towards a future and is aware that it is doing so. Man is, indeed, a project which possesses a subjective life, instead of being a kind of moss, or a fungus or a cauliflower. Before that projection of the self nothing exists; not even in the heaven of intelligence: man will only attain existence when he is what he purposes to be. Not, however, what he may wish to be. For what we usually understand by wishing or willing is a conscious decision taken – much more often than not – after we have made ourselves what we are. I may wish to join a party, to write a book or to marry – but in such a case what is usually called my will is probably a manifestation of a prior and more spontaneous decision. If, however, it is true that existence is prior to essence, man is responsible for what he is. Thus, the first effect of existentialism is that it puts every man in possession of himself as he is, and places the entire responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own shoulders. And, when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men. The word “subjectivism” is to be understood in two senses, and our adversaries play upon only one of them. Subjectivism means, on the one hand, the freedom of the individual subject and, on the other, that man cannot pass beyond human subjectivity. It is the latter which is the deeper meaning of existentialism. When we say that man chooses himself, we do mean that every one of us must choose himself; but by that we also mean that in choosing for himself he chooses for all men. For in effect, of all the actions a man may take in order to create himself as he wills to be, there is not one which is not creative, at the same time, of an image of man such as he believes he ought to be. To choose between this or that is at the same time to affirm the value of that which is chosen; for we are unable ever to choose the worse. What we choose is always the better; and nothing can be better for us unless it is better for all. If, moreover, existence precedes essence and we will to exist at the same time as we fashion our image, that image is valid for all and for the entire epoch in which we find ourselves. Our responsibility is thus much greater than we had supposed, for it concerns mankind as a whole. If I am a worker, for instance, I may choose to join a Christian rather than a Communist trade union. And if, by that membership, I choose to signify that resignation is, after all, the attitude that best becomes a man, that man’s kingdom is not upon this earth, I do not commit myself alone to that view. Resignation is my will for everyone, and my action is, in consequence, a commitment on behalf of all mankind. Or if, to take a more personal case, I decide to marry and to have children, even though this decision proceeds simply from my situation, from my passion or my desire, I am thereby committing not only myself, but humanity as a whole, to the practice of monogamy. I am thus responsible for myself and for all men, and I am creating a certain image of man as I would have him to be. In fashioning myself I fashion man.

This may enable us to understand what is meant by such terms – perhaps a little grandiloquent – as anguish, abandonment and despair. As you will soon see, it is very simple. First, what do we mean by anguish? – The existentialist frankly states that man is in anguish. His meaning is as follows: When a man commits himself to anything, fully realising that he is not only choosing what he will be, but is thereby at the same time a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind – in such a moment a man cannot escape from the sense of complete and profound responsibility. There are many, indeed, who show no such anxiety. But we affirm that they are merely disguising their anguish or are in flight from it. Certainly, many people think that in what they are doing they commit no one but themselves to anything: and if you ask them, “What would happen if everyone did so?” they shrug their shoulders and reply, “Everyone does not do so.” But in truth, one ought always to ask oneself what would happen if everyone did as one is doing; nor can one escape from that disturbing thought except by a kind of self-deception. The man who lies in self-excuse, by saying “Everyone will not do it” must be ill at ease in his conscience, for the act of lying implies the universal value which it denies. By its very disguise his anguish reveals itself. This is the anguish that Kierkegaard called “the anguish of Abraham.” You know the story: An angel commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son; and obedience was obligatory, if it really was an angel who had appeared and said, “Thou, Abraham, shalt sacrifice thy son.” But anyone in such a case would wonder, first, whether it was indeed an angel and secondly, whether I am really Abraham. Where are the proofs? A certain mad woman who suffered from hallucinations said that people were telephoning to her, and giving her orders. The doctor asked, “But who is it that speaks to you?” She replied: “He says it is God.” And what, indeed, could prove to her that it was God? If an angel appears to me, what is the proof that it is an angel; or, if I hear voices, who can prove that they proceed from heaven and not from hell, or from my own subconsciousness or some pathological condition? Who can prove that they are really addressed to me?

Who, then, can prove that I am the proper person to impose, by my own choice, my conception of man upon mankind? I shall never find any proof whatever; there will be no sign to convince me of it. If a voice speaks to me, it is still I myself who must decide whether the voice is or is not that of an angel. If I regard a certain course of action as good, it is only I who choose to say that it is good and not bad. There is nothing to show that I am Abraham: nevertheless I also am obliged at every instant to perform actions which are examples. Everything happens to every man as though the whole human race had its eyes fixed upon what he is doing and regulated its conduct accordingly. So every man ought to say, “Am I really a man who has the right to act in such a manner that humanity regulates itself by what I do.” If a man does not say that, he is dissembling his anguish. Clearly, the anguish with which we are concerned here is not one that could lead to quietism or inaction. It is anguish pure and simple, of the kind well known to all those who have borne responsibilities. When, for instance, a military leader takes upon himself the responsibility for an attack and sends a number of men to their death, he chooses to do it and at bottom he alone chooses. No doubt under a higher command, but its orders, which are more general, require interpretation by him and upon that interpretation depends the life of ten, fourteen or twenty men. In making the decision, he cannot but feel a certain anguish. All leaders know that anguish. It does not prevent their acting, on the contrary it is the very condition of their action, for the action presupposes that there is a plurality of possibilities, and in choosing one of these, they realize that it has value only because it is chosen. Now it is anguish of that kind which existentialism describes, and moreover, as we shall see, makes explicit through direct responsibility towards other men who are concerned. Far from being a screen which could separate us from action, it is a condition of action itself.

And when we speak of “abandonment” – a favorite word of Heidegger – we only mean to say that God does not exist, and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence right to the end. The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which seeks to suppress God at the least possible expense. Towards 1880, when the French professors endeavoured to formulate a secular morality, they said something like this: God is a useless and costly hypothesis, so we will do without it. However, if we are to have morality, a society and a law-abiding world, it is essential that certain values should be taken seriously; they must have an a priori existence ascribed to them. It must be considered obligatory a priori to be honest, not to lie, not to beat one’s wife, to bring up children and so forth; so we are going to do a little work on this subject, which will enable us to show that these values exist all the same, inscribed in an intelligible heaven although, of course, there is no God. In other words – and this is, I believe, the purport of all that we in France call radicalism – nothing will be changed if God does not exist; we shall rediscover the same norms of honesty, progress and humanity, and we shall have disposed of God as an out-of-date hypothesis which will die away quietly of itself. The existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that “the good” exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse. For if indeed existence precedes essence, one will never be able to explain one’s action by reference to a given and specific human nature; in other words, there is no determinism – man is free, man is freedom. Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimise our behaviour. Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse. – We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does. The existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never regard a grand passion as a destructive torrent upon which a man is swept into certain actions as by fate, and which, therefore, is an excuse for them. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion. Neither will an existentialist think that a man can find help through some sign being vouchsafed upon earth for his orientation: for he thinks that the man himself interprets the sign as he chooses. He thinks that every man, without any support or help whatever, is condemned at every instant to invent man. As Ponge has written in a very fine article, “Man is the future of man.” That is exactly true. Only, if one took this to mean that the future is laid up in Heaven, that God knows what it is, it would be false, for then it would no longer even be a future. If, however, it means that, whatever man may now appear to be, there is a future to be fashioned, a virgin future that awaits him – then it is a true saying. But in the present one is forsaken.

As an example by which you may the better understand this state of abandonment, I will refer to the case of a pupil of mine, who sought me out in the following circumstances. His father was quarrelling with his mother and was also inclined to be a “collaborator”; his elder brother had been killed in the German offensive of 1940 and this young man, with a sentiment somewhat primitive but generous, burned to avenge him. His mother was living alone with him, deeply afflicted by the semi-treason of his father and by the death of her eldest son, and her one consolation was in this young man. But he, at this moment, had the choice between going to England to join the Free French Forces or of staying near his mother and helping her to live. He fully realised that this woman lived only for him and that his disappearance – or perhaps his death – would plunge her into despair. He also realised that, concretely and in fact, every action he performed on his mother’s behalf would be sure of effect in the sense of aiding her to live, whereas anything he did in order to go and fight would be an ambiguous action which might vanish like water into sand and serve no purpose. For instance, to set out for England he would have to wait indefinitely in a Spanish camp on the way through Spain; or, on arriving in England or in Algiers he might be put into an office to fill up forms. Consequently, he found himself confronted by two very different modes of action; the one concrete, immediate, but directed towards only one individual; and the other an action addressed to an end infinitely greater, a national collectivity, but for that very reason ambiguous – and it might be frustrated on the way. At the same time, he was hesitating between two kinds of morality; on the one side the morality of sympathy, of personal devotion and, on the other side, a morality of wider scope but of more debatable validity. He had to choose between those two. What could help him to choose? Could the Christian doctrine? No. Christian doctrine says: Act with charity, love your neighbour, deny yourself for others, choose the way which is hardest, and so forth. But which is the harder road? To whom does one owe the more brotherly love, the patriot or the mother? Which is the more useful aim, the general one of fighting in and for the whole community, or the precise aim of helping one particular person to live? Who can give an answer to that a priori? No one. Nor is it given in any ethical scripture. The Kantian ethic says, Never regard another as a means, but always as an end. Very well; if I remain with my mother, I shall be regarding her as the end and not as a means: but by the same token I am in danger of treating as means those who are fighting on my behalf; and the converse is also true, that if I go to the aid of the combatants I shall be treating them as the end at the risk of treating my mother as a means. If values are uncertain, if they are still too abstract to determine the particular, concrete case under consideration, nothing remains but to trust in our instincts. That is what this young man tried to do; and when I saw him he said, “In the end, it is feeling that counts; the direction in which it is really pushing me is the one I ought to choose. If I feel that I love my mother enough to sacrifice everything else for her – my will to be avenged, all my longings for action and adventure then I stay with her. If, on the contrary, I feel that my love for her is not enough, I go.” But how does one estimate the strength of a feeling? The value of his feeling for his mother was determined precisely by the fact that he was standing by her. I may say that I love a certain friend enough to sacrifice such or such a sum of money for him, but I cannot prove that unless I have done it. I may say, “I love my mother enough to remain with her,” if actually I have remained with her. I can only estimate the strength of this affection if I have performed an action by which it is defined and ratified. But if I then appeal to this affection to justify my action, I find myself drawn into a vicious circle.

Moreover, as Gide has very well said, a sentiment which is play-acting and one which is vital are two things that are hardly distinguishable one from another. To decide that I love my mother by staying beside her, and to play a comedy the upshot of which is that I do so – these are nearly the same thing. In other words, feeling is formed by the deeds that one does; therefore I cannot consult it as a guide to action. And that is to say that I can neither seek within myself for an authentic impulse to action, nor can I expect, from some ethic, formulae that will enable me to act. You may say that the youth did, at least, go to a professor to ask for advice. But if you seek counsel – from a priest, for example you have selected that priest; and at bottom you already knew, more or less, what he would advise. In other words, to choose an adviser is nevertheless to commit oneself by that choice. If you are a Christian, you will say, consult a priest; but there are collaborationists, priests who are resisters and priests who wait for the tide to turn: which will you choose? Had this young man chosen a priest of the resistance, or one of the collaboration, he would have decided beforehand the kind of advice he was to receive. Similarly, in coming to me, he knew what advice I should give him, and I had but one reply to make. You are free, therefore choose, that is to say, invent. No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do: no signs are vouchsafed in this world. The Catholics will reply, “Oh, but they are!” Very well; still, it is I myself, in every case, who have to interpret the signs. While I was imprisoned, I made the acquaintance of a somewhat remarkable man, a Jesuit, who had become a member of that order in the following manner. In his life he had suffered a succession of rather severe setbacks. His father had died when he was a child, leaving him in poverty, and he had been awarded a free scholarship in a religious institution, where he had been made continually to feel that he was accepted for charity’s sake, and, in consequence, he had been denied several of those distinctions and honours which gratify children. Later, about the age of eighteen, he came to grief in a sentimental affair; and finally, at twenty-two – this was a trifle in itself, but it was the last drop that overflowed his cup – he failed in his military examination. This young man, then, could regard himself as a total failure: it was a sign – but a sign of what? He might have taken refuge in bitterness or despair. But he took it – very cleverly for him – as a sign that he was not intended for secular success, and that only the attainments of religion, those of sanctity and of faith, were accessible to him. He interpreted his record as a message from God, and became a member of the Order. Who can doubt but that this decision as to the meaning of the sign was his, and his alone? One could have drawn quite different conclusions from such a series of reverses – as, for example, that he had better become a carpenter or a revolutionary. For the decipherment of the sign, however, he bears the entire responsibility. That is what “abandonment” implies, that we ourselves decide our being. And with this abandonment goes anguish.

As for “despair,” the meaning of this expression is extremely simple. It merely means that we limit ourselves to a reliance upon that which is within our wills, or within the sum of the probabilities which render our action feasible. Whenever one wills anything, there are always these elements of probability. If I am counting upon a visit from a friend, who may be coming by train or by tram, I presuppose that the train will arrive at the appointed time, or that the tram will not be derailed. I remain in the realm of possibilities; but one does not rely upon any possibilities beyond those that are strictly concerned in one’s action. Beyond the point at which the possibilities under consideration cease to affect my action, I ought to disinterest myself. For there is no God and no prevenient design, which can adapt the world and all its possibilities to my will. When Descartes said, “Conquer yourself rather than the world,” what he meant was, at bottom, the same – that we should act without hope.

Marxists, to whom I have said this, have answered: “Your action is limited, obviously, by your death; but you can rely upon the help of others. That is, you can count both upon what the others are doing to help you elsewhere, as in China and in Russia, and upon what they will do later, after your death, to take up your action and carry it forward to its final accomplishment which will be the revolution. Moreover you must rely upon this; not to do so is immoral.” To this I rejoin, first, that I shall always count upon my comrades-in-arms in the struggle, in so far as they are committed, as I am, to a definite, common cause; and in the unity of a party or a group which I can more or less control – that is, in which I am enrolled as a militant and whose movements at every moment are known to me. In that respect, to rely upon the unity and the will of the party is exactly like my reckoning that the train will run to time or that the tram will not be derailed. But I cannot count upon men whom I do not know, I cannot base my confidence upon human goodness or upon man’s interest in the good of society, seeing that man is free and that there is no human nature which I can take as foundational. I do not know where the Russian revolution will lead. I can admire it and take it as an example in so far as it is evident, today, that the proletariat plays a part in Russia which it has attained in no other nation. But I cannot affirm that this will necessarily lead to the triumph of the proletariat: I must confine myself to what I can see. Nor can I be sure that comrades-in-arms will take up my work after my death and carry it to the maximum perfection, seeing that those men are free agents and will freely decide, tomorrow, what man is then to be. Tomorrow, after my death, some men may decide to establish Fascism, and the others may be so cowardly or so slack as to let them do so. If so, Fascism will then be the truth of man, and so much the worse for us. In reality, things will be such as men have decided they shall be. Does that mean that I should abandon myself to quietism? No. First I ought to commit myself and then act my commitment, according to the time-honoured formula that “one need not hope in order to undertake one’s work.” Nor does this mean that I should not belong to a party, but only that I should be without illusion and that I should do what I can. For instance, if I ask myself “Will the social ideal as such, ever become a reality?” I cannot tell, I only know that whatever may be in my power to make it so, I shall do; beyond that, I can count upon nothing.

Quietism is the attitude of people who say, “let others do what I cannot do.” The doctrine I am presenting before you is precisely the opposite of this, since it declares that there is no reality except in action. It goes further, indeed, and adds, “Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realises himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.” Hence we can well understand why some people are horrified by our teaching. For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.” But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art. The genius of Proust is the totality of the works of Proust; the genius of Racine is the series of his tragedies, outside of which there is nothing. Why should we attribute to Racine the capacity to write yet another tragedy when that is precisely what he did not write? In life, a man commits himself, draws his own portrait and there is nothing but that portrait. No doubt this thought may seem comfortless to one who has not made a success of his life. On the other hand, it puts everyone in a position to understand that reality alone is reliable; that dreams, expectations and hopes serve to define a man only as deceptive dreams, abortive hopes, expectations unfulfilled; that is to say, they define him negatively, not positively. Nevertheless, when one says, “You are nothing else but what you live,” it does not imply that an artist is to be judged solely by his works of art, for a thousand other things contribute no less to his definition as a man. What we mean to say is that a man is no other than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organisation, the set of relations that constitute these undertakings.

In the light of all this, what people reproach us with is not, after all, our pessimism, but the sternness of our optimism. If people condemn our works of fiction, in which we describe characters that are base, weak, cowardly and sometimes even frankly evil, it is not only because those characters are base, weak, cowardly or evil. For suppose that, like Zola, we showed that the behaviour of these characters was caused by their heredity, or by the action of their environment upon them, or by determining factors, psychic or organic. People would be reassured, they would say, “You see, that is what we are like, no one can do anything about it.” But the existentialist, when he portrays a coward, shows him as responsible for his cowardice. He is not like that on account of a cowardly heart or lungs or cerebrum, he has not become like that through his physiological organism; he is like that because he has made himself into a coward by actions. There is no such thing as a cowardly temperament. There are nervous temperaments; there is what is called impoverished blood, and there are also rich temperaments. But the man whose blood is poor is not a coward for all that, for what produces cowardice is the act of giving up or giving way; and a temperament is not an action. A coward is defined by the deed that he has done. What people feel obscurely, and with horror, is that the coward as we present him is guilty of being a coward. What people would prefer would be to be born either a coward or a hero. One of the charges most often laid against the Chemins de la Liberté is something like this: “But, after all, these people being so base, how can you make them into heroes?” That objection is really rather comic, for it implies that people are born heroes: and that is, at bottom, what such people would like to think. If you are born cowards, you can be quite content, you can do nothing about it and you will be cowards all your lives whatever you do; and if you are born heroes you can again be quite content; you will be heroes all your lives eating and drinking heroically. Whereas the existentialist says that the coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic; and that there is always a possibility for the coward to give up cowardice and for the hero to stop being a hero. What counts is the total commitment, and it is not by a particular case or particular action that you are committed altogether.

We have now, I think, dealt with a certain number of the reproaches against existentialism. You have seen that it cannot be regarded as a philosophy of quietism since it defines man by his action; nor as a pessimistic description of man, for no doctrine is more optimistic, the destiny of man is placed within himself. Nor is it an attempt to discourage man from action since it tells him that there is no hope except in his action, and that the one thing which permits him to have life is the deed. Upon this level therefore, what we are considering is an ethic of action and self-commitment. However, we are still reproached, upon these few data, for confining man within his individual subjectivity. There again people badly misunderstand us.

Our point of departure is, indeed, the subjectivity of the individual, and that for strictly philosophic reasons. It is not because we are bourgeois, but because we seek to base our teaching upon the truth, and not upon a collection of fine theories, full of hope but lacking real foundations. And at the point of departure there cannot be any other truth than this, I think, therefore I am, which is the absolute truth of consciousness as it attains to itself. Every theory which begins with man, outside of this moment of self-attainment, is a theory which thereby suppresses the truth, for outside of the Cartesian cogito, all objects are no more than probable, and any doctrine of probabilities which is not attached to a truth will crumble into nothing. In order to define the probable one must possess the true. Before there can be any truth whatever, then, there must be an absolute truth, and there is such a truth which is simple, easily attained and within the reach of everybody; it consists in one’s immediate sense of one’s self.

In the second place, this theory alone is compatible with the dignity of man, it is the only one which does not make man into an object. All kinds of materialism lead one to treat every man including oneself as an object – that is, as a set of pre-determined reactions, in no way different from the patterns of qualities and phenomena which constitute a table, or a chair or a stone. Our aim is precisely to establish the human kingdom as a pattern of values in distinction from the material world. But the subjectivity which we thus postulate as the standard of truth is no narrowly individual subjectivism, for as we have demonstrated, it is not only one’s own self that one discovers in the cogito, but those of others too. Contrary to the philosophy of Descartes, contrary to that of Kant, when we say “I think” we are attaining to ourselves in the presence of the other, and we are just as certain of the other as we are of ourselves. Thus the man who discovers himself directly in the cogito also discovers all the others, and discovers them as the condition of his own existence. He recognises that he cannot be anything (in the sense in which one says one is spiritual, or that one is wicked or jealous) unless others recognise him as such. I cannot obtain any truth whatsoever about myself, except through the mediation of another. The other is indispensable to my existence, and equally so to any knowledge I can have of myself. Under these conditions, the intimate discovery of myself is at the same time the revelation of the other as a freedom which confronts mine, and which cannot think or will without doing so either for or against me. Thus, at once, we find ourselves in a world which is, let us say, that of “inter-subjectivity”. It is in this world that man has to decide what he is and what others are.

Furthermore, although it is impossible to find in each and every man a universal essence that can be called human nature, there is nevertheless a human universality of condition. It is not by chance that the thinkers of today are so much more ready to speak of the condition than of the nature of man. By his condition they understand, with more or less clarity, all the limitations which a priori define man’s fundamental situation in the universe. His historical situations are variable: man may be born a slave in a pagan society or may be a feudal baron, or a proletarian. But what never vary are the necessities of being in the world, of having to labor and to die there. These limitations are neither subjective nor objective, or rather there is both a subjective and an objective aspect of them. Objective, because we meet with them everywhere and they are everywhere recognisable: and subjective because they are lived and are nothing if man does not live them – if, that is to say, he does not freely determine himself and his existence in relation to them. And, diverse though man’s purpose may be, at least none of them is wholly foreign to me, since every human purpose presents itself as an attempt either to surpass these limitations, or to widen them, or else to deny or to accommodate oneself to them. Consequently every purpose, however individual it may be, is of universal value. Every purpose, even that of a Chinese, an Indian or a Negro, can be understood by a European. To say it can be understood, means that the European of 1945 may be striving out of a certain situation towards the same limitations in the same way, and that he may reconceive in himself the purpose of the Chinese, of the Indian or the African. In every purpose there is universality, in this sense that every purpose is comprehensible to every man. Not that this or that purpose defines man for ever, but that it may be entertained again and again. There is always some way of understanding an idiot, a child, a primitive man or a foreigner if one has sufficient information. In this sense we may say that there is a human universality, but it is not something given; it is being perpetually made. I make this universality in choosing myself; I also make it by understanding the purpose of any other man, of whatever epoch. This absoluteness of the act of choice does not alter the relativity of each epoch.

What is at the very heart and center of existentialism, is the absolute character of the free commitment, by which every man realises himself in realising a type of humanity – a commitment always understandable, to no matter whom in no matter what epoch – and its bearing upon the relativity of the cultural pattern which may result from such absolute commitment. One must observe equally the relativity of Cartesianism and the absolute character of the Cartesian commitment. In this sense you may say, if you like, that every one of us makes the absolute by breathing, by eating, by sleeping or by behaving in any fashion whatsoever. There is no difference between free being – being as self-committal, as existence choosing its essence – and absolute being. And there is no difference whatever between being as an absolute, temporarily localised that is, localised in history – and universally intelligible being.

This does not completely refute the charge of subjectivism. Indeed that objection appears in several other forms, of which the first is as follows. People say to us, “Then it does not matter what you do,” and they say this in various ways.

First they tax us with anarchy; then they say, “You cannot judge others, for there is no reason for preferring one purpose to another”; finally, they may say, “Everything being merely voluntary in this choice of yours, you give away with one hand what you pretend to gain with the other.” These three are not very serious objections. As to the first, to say that it does not matter what you choose is not correct. In one sense choice is possible, but what is not possible is not to choose. I can always choose, but I must know that if I do not choose, that is still a choice. This, although it may appear merely formal, is of great importance as a limit to fantasy and caprice. For, when I confront a real situation – for example, that I am a sexual being, able to have relations with a being of the other sex and able to have children – I am obliged to choose my attitude to it, and in every respect I bear the responsibility of the choice which, in committing myself, also commits the whole of humanity. Even if my choice is determined by no a priori value whatever, it can have nothing to do with caprice: and if anyone thinks that this is only Gide’s theory of the acte gratuit over again, he has failed to see the enormous difference between this theory and that of Gide. Gide does not know what a situation is, his “act” is one of pure caprice. In our view, on the contrary, man finds himself in an organised situation in which he is himself involved: his choice involves mankind in its entirety, and he cannot avoid choosing. Either he must remain single, or he must marry without having children, or he must marry and have children. In any case, and whichever he may choose, it is impossible for him, in respect of this situation, not to take complete responsibility. Doubtless he chooses without reference to any pre-established value, but it is unjust to tax him with caprice. Rather let us say that the moral choice is comparable to the construction of a work of art.

But here I must at once digress to make it quite clear that we are not propounding an aesthetic morality, for our adversaries are disingenuous enough to reproach us even with that. I mention the work of art only by way of comparison. That being understood, does anyone reproach an artist, when he paints a picture, for not following rules established a priori. Does one ever ask what is the picture that he ought to paint? As everyone knows, there is no pre-defined picture for him to make; the artist applies himself to the composition of a picture, and the picture that ought to be made is precisely that which he will have made. As everyone knows, there are no aesthetic values a priori, but there are values which will appear in due course in the coherence of the picture, in the relation between the will to create and the finished work. No one can tell what the painting of tomorrow will be like; one cannot judge a painting until it is done. What has that to do with morality? We are in the same creative situation. We never speak of a work of art as irresponsible; when we are discussing a canvas by Picasso, we understand very well that the composition became what it is at the time when he was painting it, and that his works are part and parcel of his entire life.

It is the same upon the plane of morality. There is this in common between art and morality, that in both we have to do with creation and invention. We cannot decide a priori what it is that should be done. I think it was made sufficiently clear to you in the case of that student who came to see me, that to whatever ethical system he might appeal, the Kantian or any other, he could find no sort of guidance whatever; he was obliged to invent the law for himself. Certainly we cannot say that this man, in choosing to remain with his mother – that is, in taking sentiment, personal devotion and concrete charity as his moral foundations – would be making an irresponsible choice, nor could we do so if he preferred the sacrifice of going away to England. Man makes himself; he is not found ready-made; he makes himself by the choice of his morality, and he cannot but choose a morality, such is the pressure of circumstances upon him. We define man only in relation to his commitments; it is therefore absurd to reproach us for irresponsibility in our choice.

In the second place, people say to us, “You are unable to judge others.” This is true in one sense and false in another. It is true in this sense, that whenever a man chooses his purpose and his commitment in all clearness and in all sincerity, whatever that purpose may be, it is impossible for him to prefer another. It is true in the sense that we do not believe in progress. Progress implies amelioration; but man is always the same, facing a situation which is always changing, and choice remains always a choice in the situation. The moral problem has not changed since the time when it was a choice between slavery and anti-slavery – from the time of the war of Secession, for example, until the present moment when one chooses between the M.R.P. [Mouvement Republicain Poputaire] and the Communists.

We can judge, nevertheless, for, as I have said, one chooses in view of others, and in view of others one chooses himself. One can judge, first – and perhaps this is not a judgment of value, but it is a logical judgment – that in certain cases choice is founded upon an error, and in others upon the truth. One can judge a man by saying that he deceives himself. Since we have defined the situation of man as one of free choice, without excuse and without help, any man who takes refuge behind the excuse of his passions, or by inventing some deterministic doctrine, is a self-deceiver. One may object: “But why should he not choose to deceive himself?” I reply that it is not for me to judge him morally, but I define his self-deception as an error. Here one cannot avoid pronouncing a judgment of truth. The self-deception is evidently a falsehood, because it is a dissimulation of man’s complete liberty of commitment. Upon this same level, I say that it is also a self-deception if I choose to declare that certain values are incumbent upon me; I am in contradiction with myself if I will these values and at the same time say that they impose themselves upon me. If anyone says to me, “And what if I wish to deceive myself?” I answer, “There is no reason why you should not, but I declare that you are doing so, and that the attitude of strict consistency alone is that of good faith.” Furthermore, I can pronounce a moral judgment. For I declare that freedom, in respect of concrete circumstances, can have no other end and aim but itself; and when once a man has seen that values depend upon himself, in that state of forsakenness he can will only one thing, and that is freedom as the foundation of all values. That does not mean that he wills it in the abstract: it simply means that the actions of men of good faith have, as their ultimate significance, the quest of freedom itself as such. A man who belongs to some communist or revolutionary society wills certain concrete ends, which imply the will to freedom, but that freedom is willed in community. We will freedom for freedom’s sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of others at the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim. Consequently, when I recognise, as entirely authentic, that man is a being whose existence precedes his essence, and that he is a free being who cannot, in any circumstances, but will his freedom, at the same time I realize that I cannot not will the freedom of others. Thus, in the name of that will to freedom which is implied in freedom itself, I can form judgments upon those who seek to hide from themselves the wholly voluntary nature of their existence and its complete freedom. Those who hide from this total freedom, in a guise of solemnity or with deterministic excuses, I shall call cowards. Others, who try to show that their existence is necessary, when it is merely an accident of the appearance of the human race on earth – I shall call scum. But neither cowards nor scum can be identified except upon the plane of strict authenticity. Thus, although the content of morality is variable, a certain form of this morality is universal. Kant declared that freedom is a will both to itself and to the freedom of others. Agreed: but he thinks that the formal and the universal suffice for the constitution of a morality. We think, on the contrary, that principles that are too abstract break down when we come to defining action. To take once again the case of that student; by what authority, in the name of what golden rule of morality, do you think he could have decided, in perfect peace of mind, either to abandon his mother or to remain with her? There are no means of judging. The content is always concrete, and therefore unpredictable; it has always to be invented. The one thing that counts, is to know whether the invention is made in the name of freedom.

Let us, for example, examine the two following cases, and you will see how far they are similar in spite of their difference. Let us take The Mill on the Floss. We find here a certain young woman, Maggie Tulliver, who is an incarnation of the value of passion and is aware of it. She is in love with a young man, Stephen, who is engaged to another, an insignificant young woman. This Maggie Tulliver, instead of heedlessly seeking her own happiness, chooses in the name of human solidarity to sacrifice herself and to give up the man she loves. On the other hand, La Sanseverina in Stendhal’s Chartreuse de Parme, believing that it is passion which endows man with his real value, would have declared that a grand passion justifies its sacrifices, and must be preferred to the banality of such conjugal love as would unite Stephen to the little goose he was engaged to marry. It is the latter that she would have chosen to sacrifice in realising her own happiness, and, as Stendhal shows, she would also sacrifice herself upon the plane of passion if life made that demand upon her. Here we are facing two clearly opposed moralities; but I claim that they are equivalent, seeing that in both cases the overruling aim is freedom. You can imagine two attitudes exactly similar in effect, in that one girl might prefer, in resignation, to give up her lover while the other preferred, in fulfilment of sexual desire, to ignore the prior engagement of the man she loved; and, externally, these two cases might appear the same as the two we have just cited, while being in fact entirely different. The attitude of La Sanseverina is much nearer to that of Maggie Tulliver than to one of careless greed. Thus, you see, the second objection is at once true and false. One can choose anything, but only if it is upon the plane of free commitment.

The third objection, stated by saying, “You take with one hand what you give with the other,” means, at bottom, “your values are not serious, since you choose them yourselves.” To that I can only say that I am very sorry that it should be so; but if I have excluded God the Father, there must be somebody to invent values. We have to take things as they are. And moreover, to say that we invent values means neither more nor less than this; that there is no sense in life a priori. Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose. Therefore, you can see that there is a possibility of creating a human community. I have been reproached for suggesting that existentialism is a form of humanism: people have said to me, “But you have written in your Nausée that the humanists are wrong, you have even ridiculed a certain type of humanism, why do you now go back upon that?” In reality, the word humanism has two very different meanings. One may understand by humanism a theory which upholds man as the end-in-itself and as the supreme value. Humanism in this sense appears, for instance, in Cocteau’s story Round the World in 80 Hours, in which one of the characters declares, because he is flying over mountains in an airplane, “Man is magnificent!” This signifies that although I personally have not built aeroplanes, I have the benefit of those particular inventions and that I personally, being a man, can consider myself responsible for, and honoured by, achievements that are peculiar to some men. It is to assume that we can ascribe value to man according to the most distinguished deeds of certain men. That kind of humanism is absurd, for only the dog or the horse would be in a position to pronounce a general judgment upon man and declare that he is magnificent, which they have never been such fools as to do – at least, not as far as I know. But neither is it admissible that a man should pronounce judgment upon Man. Existentialism dispenses with any judgment of this sort: an existentialist will never take man as the end, since man is still to be determined. And we have no right to believe that humanity is something to which we could set up a cult, after the manner of Auguste Comte. The cult of humanity ends in Comtian humanism, shut-in upon itself, and – this must be said – in Fascism. We do not want a humanism like that.

But there is another sense of the word, of which the fundamental meaning is this: Man is all the time outside of himself: it is in projecting and losing himself beyond himself that he makes man to exist; and, on the other hand, it is by pursuing transcendent aims that he himself is able to exist. Since man is thus self-surpassing, and can grasp objects only in relation to his self-surpassing, he is himself the heart and center of his transcendence. There is no other universe except the human universe, the universe of human subjectivity. This relation of transcendence as constitutive of man (not in the sense that God is transcendent, but in the sense of self-surpassing) with subjectivity (in such a sense that man is not shut up in himself but forever present in a human universe) – it is this that we call existential humanism. This is humanism, because we remind man that there is no legislator but himself; that he himself, thus abandoned, must decide for himself; also because we show that it is not by turning back upon himself, but always by seeking, beyond himself, an aim which is one of liberation or of some particular realisation, that man can realize himself as truly human.

You can see from these few reflections that nothing could be more unjust than the objections people raise against us. Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position. Its intention is not in the least that of plunging men into despair. And if by despair one means as the Christians do – any attitude of unbelief, the despair of the existentialists is something different. Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense existentialism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of action, and it is only by self-deception, by confining their own despair with ours that Christians can describe us as without hope.

The American playwright who wrote Death of a Salesman, withstood the anti-communist witch-hunts and married Marilyn Monroe

Sylvia Plath’s Trauma

Analysis of Wilfred Owen's Anthem for a Doomed Youth

January 22, 1963

By HARRISON E. SALISBURY

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr (Isayevich)

Copyright (c) 1995 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A Brief Chronology of Chaucer's Life and Times

Chaucer’s Tomb in Westminster Abbey

by James Joyce

A Modest Proposal

For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland, from Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick

By Jonathan Swift

Edited and annotated by Jack Lynch

Notes

George Orwell says,"Let the Meaning Choose the Word"

"Man Underground"

Review of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

by Saul Bellow

"The Deep Pit"--a review of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

by Lloyd Brown

review of: Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

by Irving Howe

Rudyard Kipling, The White Man's Burden (1899)

The Brown Man's Burden

By Henry Labouchère

Following Amir – A trip to Afghanistan in which life imitates art

The land Hazarajat

The HAZARAJAT BOUNDARIES

COMMUNICATION AND MOUNTAIN PASSES

Hazarajat

The Climate

Emily "The Strange" Brontë (1818-1848)

The Magnanimity of Wuthering Heights

by Joyce Carol Oates

Originally published in Critical Inquiry, Winter 1983.Reprinted in The Profane Art : Essays and ReviewsCopyright © 1983 by Joyce Carol Oates

Notes

Browning's Portrait of a Renaissance Man: Alphonso II D' este, Duke of Ferrara, in "My Last Duchess" (1842)

Philip V. Allingham, Contributing Editor, Victorian Web; Faculty of Education, Lakehead University (Ontario)

References

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Philip V. Allingham, Contributing Editor, Victorian Web; Faculty of Education, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario

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References

Arnold's "Dover Beach" : A Commentary

Julia Touche

Comments on Form and Structure

Theme and Subject

Byzantium in the Imagination of William Butler Yeats

James Haines

The Silent Listener in Browning's "My Last Duchess"

Glenn Everett, Associate Professor of English, University of Tennessee at Martin

To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph (1962)Anne Sexton (1928-1974)

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (1962)William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

Newman on the Gentleman

George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University

CHAPTER V

Description of Jane Austen's Person, Character, and Tastes

What Critics Have Said About Hedda Gabler

Ibsen's Contemporaries Respond to Hedda Gabler

Continuing into the Twentieth Century

The Characterization of Hedda Gabler

Hedda Gabler as Tragedy

Is Hedda Gabler a Tragedy?

The New Woman

The Other

The Other and the Outsider

The Other in Literature

To Strut and Fret Upon the Stage:

Theatrical Interpretation of Sources for Macbeth

Shakespeare: Macbeth - Freud on the Macbeths

Endnotes

The Gunpowder Plot

What exactly was the Gunpowder Plot?

Who was involved in the Plot?

How was the Plot discovered?

What happened to Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators?

How is the Gunpowder Plot remembered?

Does the cellar where Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament still exist?

The Snow Man - WALLACE STEVENS

George Orwell says,
"Let the Meaning Choose the Word"

Originally published in Critical Inquiry, Winter 1983.
Reprinted in The Profane Art : Essays and Reviews
Copyright © 1983 by Joyce Carol Oates

To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph (1962)
Anne Sexton (1928-1974)

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (1962)
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

Shakespeare: Macbeth -
Freud on the Macbeths